“Social death is the condition of people not accepted as fully human by wider society.” 1

I remember when I first became aware of this terminology and what it meant. The context I came to know about by is called afro-pessimism. Which there was a lot of that in 2020-2021 (and still is for me). I’ve actively been working on my pessimism over the last 2 years, while simultaneously witnessing multiple people (and people groups) experience this phenomenon, to include my friend Carmine. I am no longer a pessimist but I am sick of this shit.

I made a post on Instagram wanting people to “stand on their hearts”. In preference of long-form I had to come to my substack to share my heart also.

I see all the praise that Carmine gets, even the love and respect for her art, her methodologies, her technique and her physical body. When it comes to her life, her efficacy, her motherhood, her body in service to the instruction of others — that sort of concern seems to go dismissed for talking head political and obtuse points. That then become marketing strategies. Fuck off.

When it’s time to publicly recognize her [Carmine] as a human being— I rarely see that. I rarely experience it. Being someone’s close friend is a sacred duty. We already know there’s so much more to a story … but we know too there’s so much more to a human being than how they appear on social media or in a socialized setting.

Witnessing and experiencing friendship breakups and distancing galore over the last couple of years in an interpersonal setting has been one thing. But the level of social death(s) caused by the pole industry and the folks who want to be professionals in it is something I still cannot fathom. It’s like being beside a pole STRIPS people of their human-ness. As if they do not bleed, injure or should have any agency, claim or ownership over their body or body of work. Like being next to a pole in any professional capacity is just a fucking status symbol, laborious glory? is it? is it just labor? Is it just fitness? Is it just art? Is it just a power trip? is it all just social domain and status with no LIFE attached to it? The answer is no.

Norwood considers social death as a series of losses.⁵ For example: loss of identity; loss of ability to take part in daily activities; and loss of social relationships. Cumulatively, these losses can result in an individual becoming disconnected from social life.

Although the concept is present in a diverse range of contexts, a unifying feature is that it is used to comment on the way people may be regarded as if they are something other than human or no longer a person. Being perceived as such manifests itself in not being—either directly or indirectly—treated as a person and being denied the rights of a person.2

To not recognize the full humanity of a person, in collusion and consensus, is to initiate their social death. As someone who loves Carmine, very much. To see her erased and ridden year after year about the same shit, particularly by white folks and mixed ethnicity, white cultural folks is like an episode of Black Mirror or something . And for the Black folks that see the shit and go into obscurity or initiate shit like this y’all are perpetuating and enhancing the tools fashioned for you to be edged out of society on an individual level. Please do not give in to pessimism. This shit is not cool— and if one cannot see it for Carmine. I need us to see the ways in which we participate in it collectively by being pick-me’s, playing neutral or suffering from it in silence also.

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