…the magic of white supremacy is that its presence is obscured by the focus on race. When a black teenager is unfairly profiled by police, we say it’s “because of the color of his skin,” which—as a construction—avoids the racism at play, from the segregated neighborhood the officer patrols to the pervasive belief in black criminality that shapes our approach to crime. Likewise, it obscures the extent to which this isn’t just different treatment— it’s unequal treatment rooted in unequal conditions.

—Jamelle Bouie, Why Do Millennials Not Understand Racism?

(via KEW)

At the heart of our generation’s ambivalence about the f-word [feminism] is black women’s historic tendency to blindly defend any black man who seems to be under attack from white folks (men, women, media, criminal justice system, etc.). The fact that the brothers may very well be in the wrong and, in some cases, deserve to be buried under the jail is irrelevant even if the victim is one of us. Centuries of being rendered helpless while racism, crime, drugs, poverty, depression, and violence robbed us of our men has left us misguidedly over-protective, hopelessly male-identified, and all too often self-sacrificing.

–Joan Morgan, “Hip Hop Feminist”

(via knowledge equals black power)

You may not like me because I’m an outspoken Black woman who speaks truth to power & “always makes it about race” but I still love you.

I know you think you’re a special snowflake who “isn’t like those Black people,” but white supremacy doesn’t differentiate.

I love you despite the fact that you hate me for my Blackness, because I know you also hate yourself for the same reason. It isn’t an accident that you hate yourself you were taught that from birth & most likely that self-hatred was fostered by family, in school or in your community.

As a Black person it is incredibly hard to love yourself when everything tells you that you are worthless, your culture has no value and your people are destined for poverty and crime. Don’t believe the lies. Your skin is beautiful, your people are amazing and have overcome challenges white people refuse to imagine. Self-love is the best gift you can give to yourself, no, it’s not easy, but it is worth it.

When you decide to love yourself, your sisters, your brothers we will be here for you with open arms. But until then I will love you at a distance and mourn for your lost soul and pity your love of whiteness. You are complicit in white supremacy and I must treat you as such until the day you choose to remove the shackles that have you believing the lies they told you about yourself and your people.

—The Black American Princess

Photo

I have watched enough crime and medical shows

to know what is about to happen to my cousin’s body, and to the house where the party was thrown. To the witnesses, depending on how much the local police care about another young Black man shot in the head. To the medical examiner who will make the Y-incision, find points of entry and exit, and try to preserve the striations on the bullet for later matching. I can imagine the ambulance ride, the gurney bursting through the double doors, the sigh the doctor let out when he realized there was no bringing him back from the flat line, the tone with which he must have told my aunt and uncle, “I’m sorry…”. I want to know how many party-goers went home with droplets of my cousin’s blood on their clothes. I want to know how much of the forensics and how much of the justice only happen on-screen. 

I want my uncle to not know what it feels like to bury his only son. I want my cousin’s two-month-old daughter to know her father’s face as more than an old profile picture of her mother’s on Facebook. I want people to stop calling his sister strong for not giving up after losing her mother and her brother in the span of six days.

I want people to stop using the word “loss” when a person dies. I did not lose my cousin. I did not leave him sitting on the bus after I got off at my stop. He is not in the depths of the couch. The dryer didn’t eat him along with my grey sock. I won’t find him months from now under my bed, covered in dust. He didn’t blow out of the car window or fall down the drain. We didn’t leave him unattended at the grocery store or in the mall. No GPS or map will help this situation. My cousin is not lost.

I want to know who resolves a conflict by putting a bullet in someone’s head. Who gets into an argument at a party, leaves, and comes back with a handgun and the intention to end someone’s life. Who can aim the barrel at another man’s head and pull the trigger. Who. I want to know this metaphorically, and at the same time I want to know this motherfucker’s name. I want to see him in handcuffs and I want to hear the gavel that sentences him to life behind bars and I want to have an iota of faith that the system isn’t entirely broken.

I want to know how people say to turn to God in times of tragedy. How could a just and righteous God allow this to happen? My cousin was a good kid. He graduated high school and was taking classes at a Technical College and wanted to marry his girlfriend and raise their daughter together. The last time we hung out, we sat wrapped in blankets on the couch and watched The Hunger Games and I marveled that he was old enough to be having a child. The next day, I hugged him long and hard and we promised each other we wouldn’t go so long without seeing one another again.

I want to be a woman of my word.

When I hear about “Black on Black crime,” drive-bys, and shootings at parties, my pain and frustration have always felt so…abstract. It hurts me that these are things that happen in the world. More than hurts, it angers me. I hear about Hadiya Peterson, about Chicago as a city, about babies killing babies all over the country and all over the world, and all I can say is ‘I don’t understand how this shit happens,’ and all I can feel is a big undirected FUCK YOU re: the world.

Now it has happened to my family, not just to some unfortunate people out there in the world. It has happened to someone I’ve known since we were children. Someone who I witnessed experiencing their first snowfall–I recall that moment when I want to remember what unadulterated joy looks like. Now these problems aren’t just out there in the world in scary cities like Chicago and LA and Baltimore–they’re in house parties on the outskirts of Savannah, Georgia. They are in the same zip code as homes I’ve slept in. They have robbed my aunt and uncle of a son, my cousin of a brother, my cousin-once-removed of a father. And still, I can do nothing but be hurt and be angry, even if the pain and the desire for justice are magnified by my proximity. Still, I can do nothing but cry and blog and not understand how this shit happens and feel a big undirected FUCK YOU re: the world.

It’s as if my cousin is already a statistic, even to me. They will close his coffin, and I will never again see his face. I can do nothing but sit here in my bed, telling my friends one by one, pouring words onto a page in some semblance of order, watch people write eulogies on his Facebook wall, and remind myself that, re: everything, the time is now.