I’ve been thinking a lot about refusal. I remember refusing to eat certain foods growing up: eggs, meat that had too much fat and beets, since their red juice turned the rice on my plate a weird pink that of course, I also did not want to eat.
I would sit at the table for hours after everyone else had finished, my mother’s watchful eye checking in on me every now and again with the refrain, “We don’t waste food in this house. You aren’t getting up until that plate is clean.”
Years later, I still don’t eat eggs (I don’t like them), I’m a vegetarian that eats a steak once a year on my birthday and much to my mother’s amusement, I love beets. We weren’t able to refuse much in my house growing up, a feature that bred in me a few maladaptive habits — people-pleasing, low self-esteem and self-sacrifice — that took (and takes) therapy to unpack and break. Refusal, always intentional, was then treated almost entirely as a privilege. And in many cases, it still is.
Thinking about who has the right to refuse, who has the tools and resources to refuse, who has the power to refuse, even how we feel about who is doing the refusing, can often make refusal as a personal act — and more so as a political act — seem out of reach for many of us.
When thinking about refusal as a political act, I almost always return to the story of Rosa Parks. During Black History Month, our class would read books and watch short documentaries about how in 1955, Parks refused to give up her seat on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Parks’ refusal laid bare the fundamental inequity of racial segregation and by extension all laws that establish disparate treatment and rights based on a person’s identity.
Most people know about Parks, but fewer people know that months before Parks, a Black teenager named Claudette Colvin was arrested on a Montgomery Bus for refusing to give her seat to a white woman. She was described as “mouthy” and “feisty” as she was wrestled out of her seat and shoved into a police car after the bus driver called the police. Although Colvin was first to refuse, the role of inspired activist went to Parks, who, because of her actions, was called “The Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.”
Colvin didn’t share her story until 2004 because in 1955, she was encouraged by her mother and others to stay silent and let Parks be the face of the movement. Parks, who was older (42 to Colvin’s 15), had a lighter complexion, and came from a middle-class family.
She was calm during her arrest, stoic even, and as such felt like a more powerful and more palatable choice as the face of the movement. Colvin also became pregnant a few months after her arrest, causing local and national activists to distance themselves from her even further.
Colvin died in January of this year at 86 years old. Her contributions to the Civil Rights Movement were detailed in a 2009 memoir with author Philip Hoose, and documentaries and articles. Even a day (March 2nd) and street have been designated in her honor.
Yet, I can’t stop thinking about the “rules” that muted the power of her refusal at the time, and I can’t stop thinking about how much more impactful it might have been to see Colvin, at the time, in all her righteous rage and fiery youth, as a symbol for justice and liberation.
People often talk about the messaging of a thing, many times trying to set rules or boundaries around who gets to be an activist, what constitutes activism and what is the “right way” to resist. It’s a conversation that minimizes the power of everyday individuals who fight oppression and refuse to be ignored and silenced. People who do so in big and small ways every day.
When refusal is steeped in expansion, in possibility, in liberation, it is always powerful, regardless of who does it and when, who does it and how. We’re seeing refusal exercised in ways that are chipping away and completely dismantling systems of oppression, bigotry and violence every day.
We’re seeing it in neighbors rallying together against racial profiling, intimidation and reckless inhumanity of ICE in cities like Chicago, Minneapolis and Portland. We’re seeing it in consumers boycotting stores like Target and Walmart as they rolled back their support of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which hurt designers and independent brands from the LGBTQ+ and Black communities.
We’re seeing it in protestors painting and repainting Pride colors and Black Lives Matter crosswalks and murals across the country. These are examples of collective refusal, collective action.
A personal commitment to refusal is at the core of collective action, and that personal commitment can look so many different ways. It’s part of what makes our fight so difficult to dismiss and makes our voices so challenging to silence.
Refusal, whatever that looks like to you, is sometimes a privilege, where resources and access contributes to what you’re able to refuse and what you’re willing to reject for the sake of comfort, ease, and unfortunately, sometimes safety. Refusal also bears a cost, and that cost can be as small as an accustomed convenience to something far, far more consequential like a life.
Rest assured, though, that refusal never goes unnoticed. It also always makes an impact.
Sheree L. Greer is the author of two novels and the founder of Kitchen Table Literary Arts, which showcases and supports the work of Black women writers. Learn more at Kitchen-Table.org.
