Imagine the Post Apocolyptic World

 The year, 2022.

China had bombed the shit out of Washington D.C., NYC, and their armies have taken over every major city, killing anyone and everyone with power with no conscious whatsoever. They have technologically advanced weapons, weapons that make guns look like sling shots.

California has become a huge deportation holding center. Families from across the country, broken, beaten, starving, terrified have been marched across the country on foot, without food and water, chained to the dead and the dying, most not surviving.

Once in California, separated from everyone you know and love, in a stadium full of sick people who are as afraid as you, as sick, exhausted, and depressed as you, you wait and wait and wait for months. You wait for what you don't know because all of your captors speak Chinese. You don't understand anything they say. You are housed with people from all over the country but it seems rare that you hear someone speak English. You hear all the many languages that make up the United States but you don't speak anything but English.

After months of being held prisoner in this huge stadium, you are herded into a shipping container, no light, barely enough air to breath, hot as fuck during the day and freezing cold at night. The container is put on a ship and it takes MONTHS for you to reach China. You are packed so tightly you have no room to move. There is no bathroom so you must piss and shit where you lay. The stench of everyone's waste becomes a part of your being. You want desperately to see someone you know but you search for faces and you feel alone. You are given food but it's infested with maggots. Even without the insects, not even food fit for human consumption.

You are transported to China where everyone who survived the trip is hosed down and given clean clothes and you are paraded in front of men who yell strange things and the next thing you know, you are transported off to a strange city and you understand that it is supposed to be your new home.

The food is strange, you don't know the language and you see others like you, but the light is gone from their eyes. They look dead inside.

You are beaten. They beat you until you accept the new name they give you. They beat you until you renounce your religion and you accept atheism. The beatings go on so long you pray for death.

You are raped. Men are raped anally to make them subservient, women are raped to impregnate them to produce half Chinese offspring that will be sold off for profit to child molesters and rapists.

Your employers, in name only because you aren't paid, beat when you speak English. They beat you when you don't produce enough in the factory. They beat your for their sick and sadistic pleasure.

You are forced to work in a factory, night and day, with no rest, scraps and garbage for food. You are housed in a room, all you have is a cot with no sheets.

You are told how horrible America is, and how grateful you should be for living in China.

You are told that ONLY Chinese people are beautiful and that they are naturally superior.

They do not allow you to read or write. You are not allowed possessions. You are not allowed to date or marry anyone of your own choosing. You aren't allowed any rights as a human being.

All you want to do is go home. You want your old life back. You want the safety and security of your own home. You want your family. You want your name. You want your life back.

Eventually, you gain your freedom. Well not you, but the descendants of people born in American, generations and generations later, in 2422, gain their freedom from the tyranny. They know nothing of America other than what the Chinese have told them. They have no traditions, no memories, no books or TV shows to show what it was like in America, only the accounts of what the Chinese have said it was like, which was horrible.

The freed descendants of Americans continue to reside in China because they have no connection to America whatsoever. They are treated like second class citizens, denied the same rights as the Chinese natives. They never know true freedom because of what they look like. Their skin tells people that they are not really Chinese even if they were born and raised there, even if they only know China as their home. Most people find a way to survive, living their lives trying to stay under the radar and not cause any trouble.

Some descendants of Americans fight for equality and justice, to be treated as fully Chinese, with all the rights and privileges afforded to the real Chinese people. They protest and march demanding justice. The Chinese police mow them down in the streets for entertainment and sport. The Chinese media reports that it's those American Chinese people that are the real problem. They are illiterate, criminal, lazy, and they don't appreciate all that China has done for them.

They take to the streets and they scream, "American Lives Matter"

Now, do you get it?

Anti-Racist Primer

It’s not my job to educate anti-racists . . . it’s my very voluntary labor of love, maybe obligation is a better word for it, because nonetheless, I get no compensation or reward for it. Someone has to do it and I would rather it be me than no one at all. Black people, in our efforts to deal with racistsm AND well-meaning anti-racists, get frustrated and exhausted when white people expect us to take you by the hand and guide you down the road of anti-racism.  We defensively say, “It’s not our job to teach you, go do the research yourself.”  Then we send you off to go watch a Tim Wise video or read Jane Elliot and then expect you to be as to be as sensitive and articulate as we they are when battling racists.  It’s almost like another slap in the face when we have to deal with virulent racists and then we are expected to coddle and hand-hold white people who’s hearts are in the right place but you are still in the infant stages of dismantling the fallacy of white supremacy and expect us to give you personalized lessons in anti-racism.

White people who are learning to be anti-racist eventually and inevitably end up screwing up, saying the wrong thing, being defensive, and falling back on to offensive, racist habits.  If racism is going to end, it’s going to be white people who do that shit.  Black people can talk until we are blue in the face, we can kneel, march, protest, carry signs, we can intellectually and academically destroy racist’s arguments and white people racists will still say, “I’m not racist, you’re the racist,” without the tiniest bit of irony.   They willand feel arrogantly assured that they are right with no angst or desire to be less racist whatsoever at the end of the exchange. Trolling and taunting Black people, seeking us out to diminish our pain with their arrogance is amusing for them, the feed off of the emotional toll is takes on us defending our very existence as valid in a system designed to oppress us. Racists will never hear us, never consider what we are saying as valid because the system is set up for them to deny that racism, white privilege, and the fallacy of white supremacy even exists.  The only people voices they are going to listen to are the ones sitting across from them at the Thanksgiving dinner table, in the cubicle across from them at work, on the barstool next to them, not a screen name on a device. White people are born into a system where you all hold all the cards, you are the ones who will create the shift in consciousness.  You can’t teach yourselves to be anti-racists so the responsibility falls on me. 

If absolute anti-racism is the goal and we assign a value of 100 to it, white people who identify as anti-racist are collectively at a 3. Tim Wise is at 90 given that even he says there are times when he catches himself harboring racist thoughts.  and he’s been doing the work for THIRTY years or more. I’ve never watched a minute of Jane Elliot although I’m assured that bitch is bad.  I’ve only seen one Jane Elliot video.  I don’t need to watch her, she’s not speaking to me, I don’t need to learn her lessons.  For every Jane Elliott, there are 100 more Black scholars who are more articulate and informed about racism.  Jane Elliot is not speaking to me. Her voice is directed at white people, for you to unlearn your racism.  You have been woke for a total of a year, your understanding of racism is infantile. Black people’s experience of racism didn’t begin when we took our first breath in this lifetime, it began when our ancestors were enslaved and the white man beat a new name, a new religion, and the consciousness of inferiority into them. That pain has been passed down for generations. 

·         The first step in fighting racism is saying, “I’m racist.”  Calling a white person a racist is the most offensive thing a Black person can call a white person.  There is no greater insult for white people.  You have to take the stigma and the sting from the word racist because that’s what gives them power. The most virulent, vile, evil, hateful racist will say, “I’m not racist,” and follow with repugnant filth with no other purpose than to diminish blackness and the suffering of Black people.  More importantly, calling a white person a racist signals hoards of other whites to come to their collective defense, it’s their rallying cry, their call to arms.  No white person is ever racist according to racists and they will defend that tooth and nail because you’ve insulted their whiteness, you might as well shit on the flag if you question the fallacy of white supremacy to racists.  You are offending their identity.  When you learn to say, “I’m a racist,” with ease and conviction, you diffuse their power.  You show that the world doesn’t stop turning to admit to racism.  Being a racist doesn’t mean you are inherently evil (even though inherently evil people are racists) but the power structure has led you to believe viscerally react to being called a racist.  Diffuse the power of word by owning your participation in it. 

·         Black people do not want or need to hear how empathetic you are to our experience, how you understand that you can never know what we feel, or for you to repeat back to us how insidious racism is.  We know better than you how bad racism is.  We know that unless you have Black skin, you can never truly understand the true scope of racism.  You telling us what we already know is patronizing and it’s like rubbing salt in our gaping, open, infected gunshot wounds.  It’s like a 5th grader watching an episode of Dr. Who and trying to explain the intricacies of quantum physics to a college professor. I know you want to express your frustration and show your empathy.  Find another way. Seriously, I empathize with the fact that this is all new to you and you want and deserve a place to express your very new feelings but for right now, it’s annoying to Black people so maybe you can express your “I know that I will never understand the what it means to be Black in a racist society,” sentiments to other whites and shield us from it for a while because it feels dismissive and petty when we have been saying the same things to you for our entire lives. 

·         Say, “I’m sorry.”  Everyone in this society, not just white people but everyone, is programmed to be defensive when someone calls them out on something they are legitimately wrong about.  Being wrong has no bearing on how arrogant and defensive people are when defending their beliefs. White people are particularly prone to defend their shit when they’re wrong because . . . that is exactly how the entire system was built, to perpetuate the belief that anything you said was right and anything Blacks said was wrong. When you fuck up, and you will, and when a Black person calls you out on it, even if they curse you out and tell you off, FIGHT whatever urge you have to defend yourself and just say, “I’m sorry.”  Don’t offer an excuse.  Don’t explain, don’t try to diminish what you said.  Don’t offer your promises to do better.  The most powerful thing you can do is say, “I’m sorry.”  That’s it.  Not, “I’m sorry, I was raised to believe . . . and I’m trying to be a better human being . . . I didn’t mean it because . . . what I was trying to say was . . .”  If you are really trying to be a better human being, we don’t need to hear excuses, we need peace and reconciliation.  We’ve heard all the excuses.  We’ve never heard, “I’m sorry.”  Those two words have more power than any explanation or disqualifier you add on to diminish your guilt.  “I’m sorry.” Nothing more.  I’m sorry. 

·         Debate racists, don’t validate Black people.  Anti-racists think their contribution to discussions of racism is to say, “Crumbs,” and think that’s doing the work.  It’s not.  If you aren’t actively taking the heat away from Black people who are the victim of racist attacks by white, racist trolls, you are doing noting but fanning the flames of racisms.  We don’t need likes or followers for validation.  We need white people to stop being racist.  If you aren’t saying, “Hey, douche bag, you’re racist because . . .” you are merely stroking your own ego.  I need to hear you speak up. I get it. You’re afraid of saying the wrong thing so you say nothing.  And that benefits the structure of racism.  Make mistakes, learn, but speak up.  Silence is complacency.  I will offer help and guidance to any anti-racist who is trying to find their voice.  I’m in awe of anti-racists because I never thought I would ever encounter any in real life and her I am faced with an entire growing movement.  Even when I reprimand you, it’s from a place of love. 

·         Don’t believe their lies/learn their tactics.  Racist will say, “I’m half Black.” “I’m Latino.” “My spouse is Black.”  They make that shit up to say, “See, I’m a person of color and I say that the original poster is racist so that means I’m right.”  Racist lie to suit their agenda.  They gaslight, they do all the typical racist shit and it’s not at all beyond racists to make up profiles to agree with themselves.  If you delete a racists comments, they will attack you as if you are somehow denying them their 1st amendment rights.  First of all know that the 1st amendment affords people the right to say whatever the hell they want without fear of prosecution FROM THE GOVERNMENT.  Deleting a comment on the internet is not a violation of anyone’s rights.  Racists will say, “I’m not racist, I am submissive to Blacks.”  Their implication is that if they are sexually submissive to Blacks, they’ve done the work of being anti-racists.  Spot the patterns. 

·            Come prepared to the fight.  Anti-racists LOVE to say, “You’re not listening to the OP, go do the research and educate yourself.”  That doesn’t work.  Racists are invested in believing they are superior to Blacks.  The only research that racists will do is research the lies that they have been told that they believe.  They will say with no hesitation whatsoever, “It was Africans who sold Africans into slavery.”  Where did they learn that?  From the ethos apparently, it’s bred into white consciousness from the collective brainwashing.  Have your links in a document so you can say, “That’s not accurate, here is the evidence to educate you.”  Will they read it?  Hell no they won’t.  Trolls are manifestations of arrogance, they get off on agitation.  They aren’t there to learn, they are they to emotionally manipulate Black people and get attention.  But who will read the links are the people who are reading and not commenting.  When racists say, “Nice, what would Martin Luther King say about you?” follow up with actual quotes from Martin Luther King that show his true sentiments, not the half a misquoted line racists love to throw around.  Have your link to the dozens of massacres that were committed against people of color in this country that were erased from history.  Have your list of racist legislation passed to oppress people of color built into our political process. 

·            Debate the motivation, NOT the facts.  Racist make up fact, they make up their own realities where everything they say is right. They have hundreds of years of “science” to validate their worldview, right?  Science has been whitewashed and engineered to deny our contributions so they will always be able to find “facts” that validate what they are arguing.  That’s the trap.  They are quite convinced that they can prove that whites are superior by stating fac

·         Don’t debate racist on my terms.  You aren’t Black, you will never understand my experience.  What you do understand is your experience, however.  You know what it means to be racist.  You were racist.  And as much as you want to say, “I never did or said anything overtly racist, I was a passive racist,” that’s bullshit.  You were a racist in the nastiest sense of the word.  That’s the way system works.  You’ve thought of Black people as niggers, you’ve defended racism. You’ve looked down on impoverished Blacks and blamed us for being ghetto and stupid. You know good and god damn well that you trolled Black people to tell us that racism wasn’t as bad as we say.  You defended George Zimmerman.  You donated to a racist cop when he was accused of killing an unarmed Black person.  Maybe you didn’t donate, maybe you just ignored the news when racist events were playing out on TV because you didn’t care about our lives.  You have defended the flag, you have said “All Lives Matter,” you have been racist. Own it.  It’s not enough to say that you are racist, speak truth to power and meet racists where they are.  If they see themselves through your eyes, in your eyes, that is how you beat them.  

·         Debate the motivation, NOT the facts.  Racist make up fact, they make up their own realities where everything they say is right. They have hundreds of years of “science” to validate their worldview, right?  Science has been whitewashed and engineered to deny Black contributions so they will always be able to find “facts” that validate what they are arguing.  That’s the trap.  They are quite convinced that they can prove that whites are superior by stating facts. Debate their motivation, not the facts, call them out on their core belief.  What are they really trying to say?  If they say, “Well the Jews . . . The Holocaust . . The Irish were slaves, too.”  They are saying that Blacks are inherently inferior and that’s why they are poor, that’s why those cops have to shoot those criminal niggers.  Look to what is their motivation and attack that.  It takes work and it’s not easy until you figure out how to do it.  I’ll help you.  If you need me to help you figure out a response to a racist troll, hit me up.  I don’t mind you asking for help.  You can’t ask every Black person but I’m offering my assistance.  I’ll even post more about it so you can see examples. 

·         Have empathy and compassion for the Black experience.  Very few Black people are comfortable confronting racists.  We have been bred to fear confrontation with whites, telling them about their shit because we could have been lynched, fired, beaten.  We have generations of abuse built into our DNA.  Our forefathers only knew violence and brutality as a means to control their children because that was the lesson of slavery.  Have empathy and compassion for those of us not afforded the benefit of education.  Maybe we might always use perfect English or be as articulate as the more educated of us but that’s not an indication of our value or contribution as Black people in the struggle for our liberation.  Show a little extra compassion for the most disadvantaged of our society in our efforts to rage against machine. 

·         You are in the unique position of not being triggered by racists.  Racists play off the fact that they can push our buttons and get us to an emotional state, they feed off our anger and our frustration. It’s like a drug to them, they get high from pissing us off.  You don’t have a connection to Blackness so you can debate them from a place of reason.  You can calmly, collectively dismantle their bullshit.  Use that against them.  You aren’t Black, they aren’t attacking you, your family, your friends, the people who look like you.  You can take the heat off of Black people and you should. 

·         Learn how to debate differently.  You’re white and you have been educated and socialized in the thick of whiteness where logic and reason and facts and history are set in stone and linear.  You can’t expect to lay out linear, rationed arguments to racists and have it make an impact. You have to debate from your soul.  You have to call a spade a spade, you have to cut off the bullshit when you see it and call it as bullshit.  You have to put racists in their place. Racists fight dirty.  You have to be dirtier.  This is war.  You can’t win by being polite and following the rules because racists shit on the rules.  Saying learn to debate from you soul is like saying, “Debate in Mandarin Chinese.” You have call on the things that society has told you that you have to deny, that rage that they told you was wrong, that confrontational and argumentative fire inside you.  That spirit is in you, it’s been intentionally suppressed but you can access it.  It’s the truth inside you.  Call on it.

·         Form a coalition of other anti-racists to call up for support.  We is stronger than me. 

·         Don’t give up.  This shit is hard.  Don’t quit.  I can’t take off my Black skin and take a break from racism on some days.  You can walk away at any time.  We can win this war, together, united, but it’s going to take dedication and perseverance on your part because this is voluntary to you.  

 

 

 

See My Humanity

 White people don’t see Black people as human. White people are, in fact, incapable of seeing us as human beings. White people don’t empathize with our pain because they don’t see us as equals. White people see us as sex objects, as minimum wage workers, as entertainers and athletes, and as inherently inferior, a sub-human species. That’s been the programming for centuries. We have darker skin and fuller features, our hair is different so they can look at us an see something other than what they are, a human being.

What’s always astounded me is the fact that white people can have such empathy and compassion for animals and yet the same white people who shed actual real tears over a dog in a dog fight or an animal killed on safari will cheer, they will openly applaud a Black person being killed by the cops. As much as it pains me to state the obvious, animals are a truly a different species to homo sapiens. There’s no way you can confuse an animal for a person yet white people will fall apart at a video of an animal being abused. When a Black person is murdered for the unforgiveable crime of being Black, white people donate money to the killer and go on full troll mode, purposefully seeking out Black people online who are outraged and hurt, only to inflict more hurt, to taunt and torment them by saying that that Black person’s life DESERVED to be taken for driving with expired tags or for smoking a cigarette or whatever lame excuse white people use for slaughtering us.

Not all white people love animals more than Black people though, right? Some white people torture and murder animals. See what I did there? You were expecting me to talk about the great white people who aren't racist. That's the programming. You expect whiteness to be exalted as superior. More to the point, it’s not like the animal killers love Black people. They are the ones who are torturing and killing animals, practice for killing Black people. How can I say that? As much as it pains me to say, I’m Black, I know white people. I know how evil they are, I know how much they hate us. I know white people in ways white people can never possibly know us because you are our predator and we have to know you in order to survive. White people, without having read one book by a Black author, without having seen a play, never having any exposure to blackness whatsoever, white people are convinced they know everything about us, our lives, our motivations. Black people have a deeper understanding of white people because you force your culture and norms down our throats and because if we don’t know exactly what type of white person we are dealing with, it could be fatal. It's like how Black people know to distrust cops because there are far more bad apples than white people acknowledge. We know that the TV shows and movies that show white people as the heroes and saviors, saving the day with their inherent goodness are all BULLSHIT.

This new wave of anti-racism is interesting. First and foremost, just like saying, “I’m not racist,” saying, “I’m anti-racist,” doesn’t make it so. “Woke” white people, the infinitesimally small and rare occurrence of them, are CONVINCED, beyond a shadow of a doubt, they are not racist because they follow Black people on Twitter and they proclaim how horrible it is to see those videos of Black people being murdered. And it is. It’s heart wrenching to see Black people’s lives being snuffed out because society says our lives aren’t worth anything. But for me, when I see those videos, Black people begging and pleading for their lives, terrified, I see me. I see my family, my cousins, my uncles and aunts, I see my brothers and sisters. I could easily be a hashtag. All day, every day, I’m in danger of being hashtagable because my skin is melanated. White people, even the ones who proclaim to be anti-racist, can never be hashtagable in this society because this society is set up to see them as the norm. White people see a Black person being murdered and they don’t see their loved one being murdered, they see “other.” They say, “Oh, it’s such a tragedy and I’m sorry I didn’t realize it before.” The key sentiment is that before ". . . I hated Black people and looked down on you previously but I wasn't overt about it but now I’m a good person.” And then when they close their laptop, social justice is done, back to white reality where they don’t have to think about Black pain and they certainly don’t feel it.

Should they? Should white people feel the pain of Black people who have been murdered like animals in the street, their lifeless bodies on display as a message to other Blacks, “Stay in your place or you’re next.” No, no one should have to feel that sensation. I want a life where I don’t have to feel that dread, that ache, that hopelessness. That’s what the cops want us to feel, the fear that we are next, it’s paralyzing and debilitating and that’s the entire purpose of slaughtering us for minor infractions. The power structure knows that we will be forced to hide our pain, suppress our fear, alter our behavior in order to survive our next encounter with the police. Whiteness wins every time a video of a Black person being murdered is shown because no matter how empathetic and woke white people are, they aren’t inviting anyone who looks like Rayshard Brooks or Amhad Aubrey to their dinner table. To their bed? Sure, Blacks are great at sex. But are those white people hiring more Blacks at their jobs, or standing up for the inherent injustice that is built into the very fabric of out society? Not at all. But every Black person who sees those videos wonders if they could be next.

When white real estate agents start outing the racism in their industry, when woke white people who work at Jiffy Lube or Just Brakes or the electric company expose the blatant racism built into their policies, when white people put themselves in jeopardy, when they have skin in the game, that is when their activism is authentic. When white people start calling out their bosses, the people who sign their paychecks, for the inherent racism built into their workplace, then I’ll be convinced of their sincerity. Now, it’s all empty platitudes and lies. Where are the woke nurses calling out the racism inherent in hospitals? Oh no, can’t do that. That would threaten their livelihood. It’s better to just be woke online, on a profile that doesn’t have your name or picture, where you pretend you are horrified at racial injustice and you go to work and you contribute to the disease of racism with your actions and your silence.

The other side of the table are the white people who hate Black people and blackness and they will scour every word I write, finding one sentiment that perhaps I didn’t articulate well or, more likely, find offense at one fact that they think they can dismantle because they believe themselves to be intellectually superior. Of course white people believe that they are smarter than Blacks, it’s how you’ve been conditioned. You feel it’s your responsibility to come on my page and critique and dismantle anything I say about racism or whiteness because I can’t possibly be as smart as you and you can’t let me think I’m smarter. We can’t have those negroes thinking that they can talk shit about the system that allows white people to work less and get paid more, that allows them to commit crimes and then act self-righteous and indignant at a Black person committing a crime to survive.

I’ve yet to meet the Wall Street exec who had to steal to put food on his table but I promise you that I’ve had a half a million of them tell me how criminal Black people are with no sense of irony whatsoever. And he commits more crimes before noon on a daily basis than I’ve committed in multiple lifetimes. White people who do drugs, commit crimes, have criminal delinquent children and are in the most dysfunctional relationships possible will come on this very post and proceed to tell me that I’m wrong about my perception of racism and whiteness because they know more than me. Promise.

I’m not asking white people to love me. I’m not asking for special favors or privileges. I want the exact same special privileges and favors white people get. That’s it. I want Black people to have the exact same privileges, points, perks, bonuses, and rights as white people have. We deserve to have the exact same things that you have because we are human beings, just like you. And the irony is, white people don’t have to give up a damn thing for that to happen. White people don’t have to give up any privileges and favors, they don’t have to become the unwanted of society, they don’t have to trade places with us and become the inferiors. I want to know that my skin will not cause me to be a target. I want to know that my life, my talent, my contributions have value in this society. That’s not asking too much.

Even if I don’t make a mother fucking contribution to society, my life still has value. I want white people to feel pain when they see yet another hashtag and not say, “Oh, it’s so bad that happens to Black people,” but rather say, “Why is this happening to US, why is this happening to me?” See me as a human being. See me as the same as you. Feel my pain. Feel it as your own. Feel the death of . . . whoever the latest Black person murdered was today, as a member of your family. They are. We are all human beings. We deserve more respect than a dog. We cry, we feel pain, we suffer challenges, we are fucking human beings.

The inequity that white people have created in this society is most highlighted by the homeless. I’ve never lived in Idaho or Wyoming, I don’t know what the racial makeup of those places are. I have lived in NYC, Baltimore, sort of Philly (an hour commute away) and Atlanta. I’ve visited a dozen or more other major metropolitan cities in my lifetime, nationally and internationally. The overwhelming and vast majority of homeless people are Black. Not by accident. Not because of any individual or collective choice that they’ve made. Black people are disproportionally homeless because white people don’t see us as humans.

White people make mistakes. They are forgiven. No, that’s not accurate. They are not forgiven, that implies some level of remorse or accountability. White people don’t normally have to feel remorse for their mistakes because society has told them that they are the alpha and the omega. Mistakes don’t define white people. If a Black person is homeless, we say it’s because of their poor choices. Is it? Did they decide to be born Black in a society that despised Blackness? Did they choose to be born poor in a country where a person’s wealth determines their worth as a human being? Did they choose to be undereducated by a system that wants to keep Blacks poor and uneducated? No, they didn’t. Did they choose to seek housing in a real estate market where white men think nothing of cheating, lying, and manipulating to build wealth as the expense of Black people’s safety? No, of course they didn’t make those choices. They were pawns in a game that hates Black pawns. Every facet of society is intended to CREATE Black homeless people, to step over them with an air of indignation and superiority. “I didn’t make the poor choices you made so I’m better than you.”

I’ve been homeless several time in my life. Well, I’ve been without shelter a few times in my life, I’ve lived with friends, slept on sofas, I’ve lived in hotel rooms for weeks on end because I didn’t have an address but I don’t consider that homeless. I’ve had two occasions where I had no residence, no place to go for several days. It was terrifying, not in the physical safety sense. That was draining and stressful. The terrifying part was the voices in my head that told me that I was flawed as a human being because I wasn’t living in a four-bedroom McMansion with granite counter tops and his and hers walk in closets. Wanna take a guess how man woke white people are living like that right this minute and have no concern or care for the homeless? More than can be counted.

In the early 90s, I remember I had just separated from my husband, I was depressed and scared; he had just told me he had one woman pregnant and he was in love with another woman and that he never wanted the reconciliation that he had told me he wanted for two months. I ended up on a 72-hour psych hold because I got drunk as hell and I was walking the streets crying and screaming like a crazy woman. When I was released, I didn’t have a place to go. My best friend was without an address and sleeping on someone’s floor at the time. He offered to let me sleep on her floor while she was at work for a few hours a day until we could find an apartment and move in together. For three ofr four days, I walked the streets of NYC all night, waiting to take the train to Brooklyn in the morning so I could I get a little rest. You can’t rest. When you don’t have a place to lay your head, your brain doesn’t stop working, telling you that you’re a failure. My friend was an immensely talented, brilliant Black man. (He died.) I am an immensely talented, brilliant Black women. Did we both end up without an address because of some inherent flaw within us. NO! The system is built to foster whiteness and neither of us was born with that benefit.

The other time was when I was living with a . . . man I had loved for 7 years. He wasn’t a boyfriend, we weren’t even in a relationship. He was an individual with whom I had a complicated and dysfunctional relationship that consisted mostly of me loving him and him loving light skinned women and him loving how I made him feel for two weeks a year . . . for 7 years. After the two weeks were over, he would say something hurtful, leave, and come back a year later. Whatever one calls that, that’s what we had. I moved out of his place in Chicago, drove back to Atlanta, and didn’t have a place to stay for a few days. I ended up sleeping in my car in the parking lot of a 24 hour Home Depot for a few nights. I honestly can’t even tell you where I ended up living after that. I can tell you that being without shelter didn’t define me. I had just finished writing what will be (or what may be already in another dimension) the most amazing stories of my life. I knew I was an amazing writer with a voice that deserved to be heard even while I was trying to hide from the cops to get me to move my car. Me not having a home in that moment didn’t change any of those things. I didn’t automatically become stupid, or untalented, or lazy because I didn’t have a home. Nothing about me changed other than the fact that I didn’t have a support system or an income to provide for the basics. Being homeless didn’t mean that I made bad choices. It means that society is built to keep me, all Black people oppressed. Period.

Every homeless person has a story. Every homeless person is a human being deserving of respect and an opportunity to provide for themselves. The American system is set up to keep homeless people homeless because they are the plague that everyone loves to decry is so unfortunate but you don’t lose a minute’s sleep over it because you have a bed, you have a car and a fridge full of food so you NEVER have to think about homeless people if you don’t want.

We, collectively, as a society, look at homeless people in the exact same way white people see Blacks. “It’s their fault they are in that situation and it doesn’t affect me, it’s not my problem. It’s sad and unfortunate and I have to pretend to be concerned because I know that society expects me to show compassion but in all honesty, when I don’t see them, I don’t give a fuck about them one way or the other, they never enter my consciousness, their existence doesn’t change my reality.”

The white people who think they are anti-racist and oh so woke don’t care about Black people, they care about the perception that they are racist. They don’t see the humanity of Black people all of a sudden, they see their shame that they were virulent racists and didn’t realize it. There is so much narcissism in white people proclaiming their wokeness and posting about Black Lives Matter.

I’ve said it 1000 times. The worst thing you can call a white person is racist. There is no greater insult. White wokeness is a response to that, it’s the way white people can say, “Look at me, I’m not racist.” Ask a woke white person to invite a homeless person into their home for dinner, give them a place to stay, let them sleep on your couch for a few months and help them get on their feet. You’ll get the, “It’s not safe . . . mental issues . . . my job . . . my children,” all those arguments.” Without knowing one homeless person, without knowing if they had a fucked-up husband who cheated on them or a racist employer who fired them, white people will blanketly disparage homelessness and blackness because they don’t see us as human. No human being deserves to sleep on the street or in a shelter where the admins are going home to huge houses and profiting from their pain.

I’ve done it. I’ve had homeless people stay with me in my home to help them. One was an extraordinarily gorgeous man, one was a mentally ill woman who could sing like an angel. They didn’t rape me or steal from me. I never felt in danger because I see myself in them. I saw them as human beings deserving of help. I’ve fed homeless people out of the trunk of my car at midnight because I worked as a concierge at a luxury condo and I would take the food when I got off at midnight and go to the church around the corner from my apartment. When I lived in NYC, one brotha named Carlos was in love with me because I would give him money every day, stop, and talk to him. He went to jail once for a few months and I was panicked. I asked every employee in the bank where he slept what happened to him, I asked the newspaper guy who literally was 5 feet away from him every day. No one even knew who he was, let alone his name. We treat the homeless like lepers, like they are deserving of living like that because we are a heartless, shallow, self-centered nation. A racist nation on top of that which looks at Black people as is their skin is a crime. The crime is whiteness and what it’s done to create the belief that only people with white skin deserve respect, accolades, pleasure, and opportunity.

As long as white people don’t see Black people’s humanity, nothing is going to change. Until you see that we laugh, we cry, we bleed, we fear, we love in the exact same way as you, until you have compassion and empathy for our unique and individual stories, until you see our HUMANITY, until you acknowledge that we deserve to have everything that you have, a life with minimal, third world stressors like your water heater broke or you have to carpool with your spouse because your car is in the shop, then nothing is going to change.

The Fate of Our Race

Sometimes I wallow in my own existential angst so much until I get so frustrated I feel like there is no hope for the future.  I am in the very unique position of being born in the very first year of Gen X’ers.  I was not raised by a Baby Boomer, the generation before me, however; well, at least not the most formative years of my life.  The most formative years of my life, from 0-4, I was raised by Depression Era grandparents who instilled in me values and beliefs that reflected the slave mentality/oppressive/austere practices with which they were raised. Certainly, while I was raised by a Baby Boomer from 4-17, my love, allegiance, and sensibilities have always been more aligned with my grandparents than my biological parents. The differences between myself and the people raised by Baby Boomers are as clear as night and day. I don’t think like, act like, I don’t believe the things that my peers do, nor do I value the same things that they do. I am also in the very unique position of never having a child so I’ve never had anyone to impart my knowledge and mistakes upon. 

It seems that across the board and almost unwavering consistently, that Baby Boomers, those individuals who born between 1946-1966, raised their children with far less standards, guidelines, and restrictions . . . which might not necessarily have been a bad thing given that the alternative was to raise your children in the abusive, restrictive, and stagnating environment of the 50s, but the results have certainly not been positive.  My peers, the X’ers born 1966-86, are the Me generation, self-centered and emotionally immature, but they’ve given birth to the ME, ME, ME, ME, ME generation, the Millennials born ’86-’06, and I’m terrified of what’s going to become of the Gen Z’s, 2006-‘26.  Baby Boomers and X’ers wanted to raise their children with a life of privilege, a life free of stress and pain.  What they’ve created is a generation of spoiled, self-centered individuals who are incapable of helping to break the chains that have kept us in mental bondage since our collective consciousness was created in this land. 

The studies of traits of Millennials are discouraging, to say the least.  Millennials are pathologically narcissistic, sociopaths, fame-obsessed, tech dependent, under-educated while achieving the highest level of education, and they feel entitled to recognition and reward without having done anything to deserve it.  And while the studies are not encouraging about the state of Millennials, I can guarantee you that African American Millennials were not included in their studies and that the negative traits of Black Millennials are exacerbated and magnified tenfold due to our exposure to continual, institutionalized, and rampant racism.  Ethics, structure, civic-mindedness, altruism, benevolence, responsibility, logic, reasoning, introspection, accountability, integrity, contextual history, literacy, art appreciation, home-economics . . . those are things AND MORE parents stopped teaching their children in the 60’s.  Parents stopped raising children in the 60s and they let the TV and the schools raise them.  It created a self-centered generation that has created an even more pathologically self-centered generation in Millennials.  What, dear lord, is going to become of future generations if we have two generations that have no concept of what the concept of delayed gratification means, or earning your accomplishments rather than just getting them because you’ve reached a milestone?  How are our relationships ever to survive if we have two generations who have no clue what it means to compromise, to apologize, to build a life based on selflessness and shared goals when all they’ve seen are ghetto depictions of relationships, and all they know is focusing on what makes ME feel better?  You can’t teach what you don’t know so how are parents going forward going to teach their children?  And what is to become of us as a race of people if we don’t teach our children the things that will allow us to survive or even excel in this world? 

I might be wrong.  I don’t want to assume my perspective is correct simply because I see things from a much more complex lens than my peers.   Is it “wrong” for your child to get a car just because the Earth has circled the sun 16 times since their birth?  Maybe, it’s a good thing for parents to teach their children that they don’t have to DO anything to be worthy, that they are inherently worthy just for being alive.  I can’t co-sign with that concept entirely because if I were a parent, I would make damn sure that before my child got a car, any kind of car, whether I paid for it or I made them pay for it, that they would be able to fix dinner, clean the house, take out the trash, volunteer in the community, and understand that they had to pay for car insurance, gas, and maintenance as their responsibility.  Of course I would help if they needed it, that’s what parents are supposed to do, but I would not let them just get a car because all their friends have cars.  There is valor in understanding that there are consequences for your actions.  If you aren’t taught that, it’s not a lesson you are going to learn, even if you have to deal with the negative consequences of your actions.  To someone who has never been taught that lesson, they will never see a correlation between their unhealthy behavior and the detrimental outcome of their own actions. 

If I had children, they would start preparing for adulthood YEARS in advance, setting part of their allowance/income aside for the items they will need when they become truly independent and get their first place.  I could never raise child who has never read a book or been to a museum, or who can’t recite the words of Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech.  But, I’m not a parent.  I wouldn’t let my child listen to barely literate, monotonous, mono-syllabic, degrading, unintelligent rap/pop music.  I couldn’t.  It’s like giving them an engraved invitation to be hypnotized and indoctrinated by stupidity.  If I were a parent, I would make good and god damn sure my child had a TALENT that they could rely upon.  I would make sure they understood that they need to nurture and develop their creativity, intellect, and understanding of the world before I sent them out as an adult.  They would know how to clean a house, top to bottom, they would know how to articulate their feelings in a mature, healthy discussion without being passive aggressive or co-dependent or hurtful.  But, again, I’m not a parent.  Parents today don’t teach their children any such things. 

My grandparents were as traditionally conservative and blindly conforming to unhealthy practices as any Black people could be who came of age in the 40s.  They taught me, however, to examine things from many different perspectives, to RESEARCH, to investigate, to not just assume that what I know is the “only” truth.  That allowed me to grow up and study world religions, to truly think about how African Americans came to practice Christianity, to learn about other religions and belief systems and to ascertain that Christianity is not a religion but a tool to control the masses.  I’ve studied every major world religion.  I’ve studied Ancient Egyptian beliefs and myths.  I’ve studied New Age, Metaphysical, Mystical, Occult teachings as well as physics and science.  I’m versed and learned in a great many ways that allows me to intelligently discuss, examine, and dissect exactly why I know for a fact that the Bible is written by men who wanted to manipulate and control people with fear.  My grandparents would be HORRIFIED to know that I’m not blindly Christian, like a slave on the plantation afraid that the Big Bad Sky Daddy was going to punish me to eternal damnation, but it’s because they instilled in me a thirst for knowledge, a desire to learn more than just what I’m told, that I have been able to learn and see and understand truths that would otherwise keep me ignorant.  For Black X’ers and Millennials to say, “I’m Christian because my grandparents were and that’s good enough for me,” when they literally have every bit of information in the world available to them at their fingertips, is to say, “I don’t want to be smart or informed.  I don’t want look at history, I don’t want to understand our past, I don’t want to question anything that was beaten into us on the plantation and I’m perfectly fine with that.” 

My grandmother taught me how to sew, how to play piano, how to do every craft known to womankind.  So what, you say!  Those things aren’t important today, right?  Well, the parts of the brain that they stimulated, the skills I learned from continual practice and repetition, from creating things from nothing are skills that people don’t have today and that’s important.   My grandfather taught me about the political process, about government, about activism.  He would sit with me for hours and we would talk about math problems and how to solve them.  It taught me that reasoning, logic, it taught me that I can’t just take things the media tells me at gospel.   Parents stopped teaching their children those things in the 60s.  Materialism, money, celebrity, and shallowness replaced character building skills.  I saw in my grandparents the skills of cooperation, support, love, commitment and partnership.  I see in my peers, selfishness and immaturity, an unwillingness to examine one’s own behaviors for fear of being seen as being inferior or flawed.    They nurtured and believed in one another.  Millennials think relationships are built on tearing down and degrading one another.  How can we evolve as a race if we are stagnating in unhealthy behaviors? 

For as many horrible, damaging, detrimental things my mother did to me when she raised me, she did some things that I am eternally grateful for.    Joan made it her mission to expose me to as much Black culture as she could.  Every Black play, dance company, concert, museum, theater project, anything to do with Black history, we were there.  I NEVER went to school on Martin Luther King’s birthday, even before it was a holiday.  When I was growing up, I HATED that I had to clean the entire house, to do very adult chores, every single solitary Saturday, before I could go outside and play.  She taught home economics for a living so I learned the proper way to set a table, the way to make hospital corners on a bed, the correct way to do laundry, she taught me how to budget for a household and pay essentials first and luxuries for the month get crossed off the list if you don’t have enough income.  People today don’t know that there is a proper way to set the table because they eat out of Styrofoam boxes and no one has ever taught them that there is a right and wrong way to do certain things.  Part of that is slave mentality, I get that.  I get that it’s not the most important thing in the world to know the difference between a salad fork and a dinner fork or that there’s a difference between a white wine and a red wine glass.  But it’s also important to note that I’m not a slob. I know how to clean a bathroom, dust, vacuum and keep a house presentable.  I don’t have to be cajoled to load or empty the dishwasher and I’m not so immature that I refuse to put a bag in the trash can because I think I’m too good to do it.  I’m also not caught up on instant gratification which is a trait of an immature person.  I’m aware that genres of music exist beyond what’s played on the radio and I read more Black history books before I was 15 than the average 15 other Black people combined have read in their entire lives.  We’ve lost that.  X’ers and Millennials have never read a book in their entire lives.  Well, other than Zane and 50 Shades of Gray which were so poorly written, so laughably and horribly illiterate that it’s frightening.   Millennials don’t read more than 140 characters so I guess the fact that they have read at least one book is . . . who am I kidding, it’s pathetic. 

I’m afraid for our future.  I’m afraid because we (Baby Boomers on down) have not taught our children to be activists.  But, you say, Black Lives Matter is being championed by Millennials, it’s their energy that has given voice to the concerns of a generation being slaughtered unjustly.  But look deeper at the movement, something that most X’ers and beyond can’t and don’t know how to do.   BLM is a movement without an objective.   Are they fighting for legislation?  Are they trying to get a bill passed that will address police brutality and the institutionalized racism that has rendered us target practice for white police who see us as animals?  That’s how change is created.  Nope, BLM activists are Twitter bullies telling anyone who doesn’t agree with them to have two seats.   BLM is predicated on the fact that “being respectable” is a bad thing, as if carrying oneself with dignity and character, being articulate, educated, and informed are bad things. They can’t even comprehend that being ghetto is not inherent to being Black.  They think that being inarticulate, dysfunctional, and disenfranchised is the definition of Blackness, they are fighting for our worst behaviors to be seen as normalized.  BLM is based on the premise that those who came before us, those who shed their blood and died, who sacrificed and suffered didn’t do a damn thing, that they were sellouts, that all that is important in a historical context are the self-centered needs of people to be even more self-centered without any repercussions.  So, while most Black people think that BLM is a great achievement, that it’s momentous and life-altering, it’s only because they have no clue or context of what it means to truly create social change.  A #hashtag does not beget equality or social change. 

If you ask any parent, they will swear that they are the best parent, that they’ve never done anything wrong, that they teach and guide and shape their children and the things I’m writing about apply to everyone else but them.  Again, you can’t teach what you don’t know so if you’ve never been taught to be introspective, you have no clue that you aren’t teaching it to your children.  If you’ve never be thought to use logic and reason, if you’ve never been held accountable for your wrongdoings, you can’t pass that knowledge down to your children.  And trust and believe that the school systems are making sure that Black students don’t know the educational basics.  They are being tested and after the test, they forget everything that they learned and they are ill-prepared to face the future with any sort of intellect whatsoever.  Learning involves more than taking a test.  So what exactly are children learning today?  And what will they teach their children?

I have dreams and plans, real ones, laid out, developed, intricate plans on creating a paradigmatic shift in consciousness for African Americans.  I’ve been working on them for more than 15 years.  I’ve conceived of and outlined very specific ideas that will attempt to lift us out of our quagmire of dysfunction and slave mentality.  I’m not for a second suggesting that I’m completely healed from my own issues, in fact, it is a sign of my emotional maturity to unequivocally state that I know for a fact that none of us, myself included, no one who has his or her ancestry steeped in the horrors of slavery is immune to the disease of slave mentality.  Not one Black person is immune from the plague of the fallacy of white supremacy.  I’m at least aware of my own shortcomings.  That’s something most Baby Boomers, Gen X’ers, and Millennials are incapable of doing.   I hope like hell I can work through my own issues enough to be able to exact some significant change in my lifetime.  I hope that the children of the today, the Z’s or whatever they are going to be called, might have a brighter future if I can at least start to chip away at the unhealthy mindsets that debilitate us today.