How Can We Come Together in These Scary Times?

Anna Malaika Tubbs, PhD has an incredible ability to inspire radical hope while educating about grave topics. In her first book, New York Times bestseller The Three Mothers, Tubbs tells the stories of Berdis Baldwin, Alberta King, and Louise Little —the women who raised some of America's most pivotal Civil Rights heroes, shedding light on the impact of Black motherhood on America.

Now, the sociologist and scholar is back with her second book, Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden from Us (another New York Times bestseller), in which she outlines how the created hierarchy has plagued the United States since its founding. She digs deep to show us how a system based on a flawed binary of gender has divided us, perpetuating racism, sexism, and other inequities. It is a sobering topic, but Tubbs, true to her literary form, brings deep faith. She doesn't point fingers but rather illuminates how antiquated rules have hurt everyone and the ways we can all come together—particularly in these challenging times.

As Tubbs says, now is the time "to stop blaming each other, to stop dividing ourselves from one another, and instead, let's focus on this system" and how we can create a better path forward. 

A CONVERSATION WITH ANNA MALAIKA TUBBS, PhD

An illuminating aspect of your book, Erased, is how it shows us that our divisions are a product of manufactured system, and that it isn't our nature as humans to want to be so divided.

Yes—and that is the one thing that removes its power the most: when we can all realize how made up the system is. When it comes to American patriarchy or any system that tries to place us into hierarchies, it is made up, and that means that we can always make up something different.

This system is American patriarchy, which you delve into in your book, illuminating how it has hidden and oppressed many aspects of our humanity. What is specific about American patriarchy that is important to know and what have we been overlooking in our definition of it?

What's missing are a couple different things. The first is that the reason I specify American patriarchy is not because I think that we are the only place that exists in a patriarchy. There is patriarchy across the world. Rather, patriarchy will operate differently depending on the nation where it finds itself. It depends on who those founders of that nation were, who wrote the laws, and what those laws stated. In our nation, it's the Constitution. And so that's number one: Patriarchy does not exist in the same way across the world.

Number two is that we've missed that patriarchy is not only hurting women; it's hurting all of us. And it’s impacting all women in very different ways. All men are not participating in patriarchy in the same way, because even from the design of American patriarchy, all men were not included in that definition of men. It is not a man versus woman debate. What I'm saying is there's a system that's been built into the fabric of our nation that told us that there was only one way to be man in the United States, and that women only had power in their ability to reproduce that manhood through children. So, what I'm arguing is that most of us, if not all of us, were not included in this initial definition that American patriarchy offered to us, and that's why we need to challenge it together.

What are some clues that suggest these systems are made up?

How we know that it's made up, and how I detail it in the book, is first and foremost, you have to look at systems that existed before American patriarchy. It didn't just emerge when humans came into existence on this planet. It was built and had to eliminate whatever came before it. In the United States, we have seen the erasure of indigenous belief systems. For example, various tribes across the United States recognize something beyond the gender binary. They recognize that women can hold positions of leadership and be chiefs, and that boys can have long hair and wear jewelry.

American patriarchy, when it was constructed, said we must destroy evidence of these things. It said we must remove power from women and put people into particular boxes, telling them how they’re supposed to look and act, and what they're going to be able to participate in. All of this suggests that this is something that was constructed and requires ongoing maintenance. It is not something that we would naturally organize ourselves with, but to make it seem natural and undeniable, you have to erase the traces of that fabrication. You also have to make people believe that if they don't follow those dictates, that something will happen to them, and they’ll be punished for it. You have to instill fear in people, and you have to make it so that they can't see other examples. So, then, if people do not fit neatly into these categories, it might become more of an internal experience, where they blame themselves, deny something within themselves, or blame others around them, rather than pointing back to the initial fabrication of it all.

That is one of the largest things I'm trying to reveal in this book: to stop blaming each other, to stop dividing ourselves from one another, and instead, let’s focus on this system. We must go back and see what was constructed and see how we can build something else.

How and where can we each start to build something else?

I think of it on levels. First, in our own lives, if we've been presented with this binary, not only the notion of man woman, but of dominate or be dominated, we have to ask ourselves: Do we believe that to be true? Have we been acting in a way that leads us to think we are supposed to control others, dominate, and accumulate as much power and wealth as possible? We have to question what kind of accomplishment we are all seeking and if we can start to think of what else might be available to us. Or have we been acting in a way where we feel we’re meant to be quieter and to be in the background? Again, we can start to see that there is something beyond that binary.

Once we can shift our perspective in our minds, we can then consider how it affects our relationships. For instance, in parenthood: Are we telling our children what they have to be? Are we dominating them? Or are we asking: What do you really care about? Can we think beyond boxes and be creative with our children? Can we walk beside them? Within our families, can we challenge some of these assumptions that are limiting all of us?

Then thirdly, on a community level, we can ask: How can we meet each other's needs? How can we think more about our interconnectedness to each other, rather than this individual journey of trying to gain as much power over other people? Can we instead say, ‘I recognize the humanity in you, and I recognize that each of us should be treated as human beings.’

That final level and layer being: How do we vote to create this on a national scale? Because American patriarchy is not in alignment with American democracy. American democracy would be characterized by the power being vested in all the people of our country. However, we have yet to see that fully realized, as the initial establishment of this system only recognized one group of people and left many others out. We haven't fully experienced what it's like to be in a nation where everybody's voice counts and where we recognize everybody's humanity. And that is what I find to be incredibly exciting: we can actually work with the Constitution, so long as we redefine who gets to be considered in it.

What do you say to the person who is scared to create a new path?

It makes me think of those of us who are subconsciously protecting something that doesn't serve us. Because if we've been told all along that that's how we get to be treated as human in our nation, that those are the roles that we have to play, we genuinely do feel afraid of anything that counteracts that because we've forgotten the other things that we've had access to. We've forgotten, for instance, how to listen to ourselves and trust our intuition. We've forgotten in many cases, there's been parents who have forsaken their children and disowned their children because their children don't fit into these categories neatly, and they've forgotten even that bond that they have with their child because they're so afraid that that child won't be treated as a human being if they don't act in accordance with these dictates. And so many people don't even realize why they protect these categories with everything they have. So, I have a lot of compassion for people that find themselves in that position where they're fearful of anything different, and it feels like everything will be taken from them if they don't maintain this initial order. But they must realize, again, that it is a system that was fabricated and that they can choose differently. So, with that fear, it's about having an openness to at least learning what it's that caused that fear to begin with, and learning how things in our lives have been manipulated.

So, the first step is curiosity. Is there something else available to me, and can I at least open my mind enough to walk through an analysis of this fabricated system and myself, Why has that been made up? And once I'm aware of it, is it still the thing that I'm going to choose, or will I explore other options?

What are you seeing in humanity that gives you hope?

I'm a very hopeful person. In both my books with the three mothers and with erased, I'm always studying people throughout history who have seen that other way, who have always been able to picture the alternatives, largely because they haven't had the option of believing what's being sold to them. Let’s look at Black women in American history. By law, Black women were told that their children were not their own children. That our kids were somebody else's property. And Black women did not accept that. Black women didn't simply say, ‘Oh, well, because the law says that that must be the truth.’ Instead, they said, ‘I know that I'm a human being. I know that my children are human beings. How do I challenge that at every turn? How do I profess a different vision? How do I make it so that the policies in my nation reflect my vision? And how do I create a nation that is worthy of these children of mine?

Any time we can have those realizations, especially in very fearful moments, like we find ourselves in right now, and we can realize there's something else always available to us. We have to be able to envision it. And we can draw inspiration from anyone who has done that throughout American history. That brings me a lot of hope.

One of the mantras I mentioned in the end of the book is, ‘Things don't have to be this way.’ Things don't have to be this way when you're feeling fearful, silenced, or unsure about what else you can do. Even being able to just say, ‘Things don't have to be this way’ is a powerful first step—and it's something that we're always capable of.

Shop on Bookshop & Support local book stores Shop on Amazon

Anna Malaika Tubbs is a New York Times bestselling author and multidisciplinary expert on current and historical understandings of race, gender, and equity. Her storytelling also takes form in her talks, including her TED Talk that has been viewed 2 million times. Learn more at annamalaikatubbs.com.