I finally figured out that what bothers me about the outrage against Zoe Saldana is that the outrage is against Zoe Saldana and not, say, the institutions that systematically strip the color, truth and validation from Black women’s stories in specific and marginalized people’s stories in general.

Our collective energy is misdirected. Last week, frustrated by the fresh wave of tweets and articles directed towards Zoe Saldana I asked, “Why do we beg for people to include us in their made up narratives? Especially when they’ve never tried to include us before?”

@leonicka challenged me, saying “…we cannot ignore that the mainstream narratives are powerful and actively harm people. Dismantling the negative is as important as building the positive.”

She’s absolutely right. We must be critical of narratives that already (mis)represent us and hold them accountable to our truths because (at least from the category of analysis we call The West) their power is potent and far-reaching.

But we shouldn’t do it at the expense of the individual. And this is where it gets deliciously messy. Where there is oppression, there is also resistance and there is also a chance to create, and to keep creating the future institutions we want in control of our stories.

No, Zoe Saldana did not write this story. Yes she did have a choice as to whether or not to accept the role and yes she lacks a critical understanding of how color and race play out in the United States and globally. But no we should not hold her blackness ransom because we feel like someone else should have played the part.

Even if a darker Black woman played the part, the Nina Simone story is still being co-opted. (can I get a retweet?!)

The institutions win here and keep winning when we single out individuals and offer them our pity because we feel they made the wrong decisions about their careers.

We have so, much, work to do. There’s much infrastructure to build so we can amplify the work Black filmmakers are already doing centering Black people.

(We actually really need a comprehensive 21st Century Strategy for Creating for and Connecting at the Borderless Margins. But y’all ain’t ready for that.)

When we are, first we’ll have to come to terms with the idea that the infrastructure we’re building now will require a divestment from the legacy ones. It will require we unlearn what we think is a legitimate story and it will require that we get uncomfortable with spaces different from the US-centered narrative of Blackness that dominates these types of conversations.

We have to keep creating. My response to @leonicka was, essentially, yeah, girl! You’re right. We can’t let these mofolokos get away with telling our stories all wrong. But we can’t let them suck all our rage energy either. We need some of that rage energy to fuel the future we’re creating.

What do you think? Are we being to hard on Zoe Saldana as an individual and letting the institutions that privilege lighter skin off too easy? Are we investing too much energy in critiquing and not enough in amplifying or creating? What would a film industry centered on Black women look like?

Onwards!