Morning Thoughts

I think the main reason, or at least the largest of a great multitude of reasons, that I'm angry with and exhausted by the state of the world is that when we pretend, as we have been pretending, that the current moment in America's racial struggle for the truth of equality is somehow about educating or learning we continue to live in the lie that what has happened and what is happening to Black America wasn't intentional. We are premising too mush of our response on false information to make it easier on ourselves. Everything that has happened has happened in plain view of all of America. The gaslighting was part of the point. The denial was the key. White America *chose* not to see it. It was not a blind spot. It was strategic and willful racial blindness at best and outright racist oppression at worst. The ruling class and those subjected in it's hatred found it easier to to manufacture alternate facts in which to hide their complicity.

"Law and Order", "The Silent Majority", "Real Americans". The language they used is all coded dog whistles. Some of it is common sense and meant to set up straw men. Is anyone against law and order? I mean some people are. Very few. Most people want a just system of law and order. That's not what Trump means when he says its. Or Nixon. It means a law and order that subjugates your political enemies. Look at the war on drugs. It began as racialized laws meant to subdue minority communities and then became useful as a tool to discredit radicals and groups opposed to right wing ideology. It's fashionable to comment on how badly the justices system has been politicized and we should. It's fucking bonkers. But let's not let the magnitude of today's situation obscure how much it's always been politicized. J. Edgar Hoover existed. That shit all happened. This is not really new. It's just a bit more obvious because of the ubiquitousness of information these days. We should be aware of very much more than what the citizenry was aware of in the 70's.

I get the sense most of White America wants to read books to learn "what it means to be black in America" and make a black friend or get closer to their black friends. Reading is good. You're gonna have to read a lot of books if that's your plan. Just like being white in America is huge spectrum, surprise, surprise so is being black. Leave your black friends alone. Nows not the time to use them to better yourself. Keep your relationships whatever they were and if they are the type where you can be involved be involved. It's stressful being "the black friend" so keep that in mind. The best thing we can do as allies is understand that systemic racism relies very much on gaslighting. Not being able to define it clearly and name it firmly has allowed it to be both sided in ways that are meant to oppress our black brothers and sisters. With that being the case an easy way to help is to accept that the learning and educating is FOR US, it helps us be better people. To help our brothers and sisters we must validate their experience by understanding the totality of the Black Lives Movement. The antidote to gaslighting is flooding the conversation with the truth. Find a way to break it down easily and repeat it until people are sick of hearing it.

In America, lives include the right to vote. Not being killed by the police is the barest minimum possible. What needs to happen is Black America is accepted completely into the promise of the America we have told ourselves we call home. Voting Rights are part of this. If you supports a party that is seeking to limit them, you are not on the right team and you are not down for the cause.

Voting rights leads directly to prison reform. Black lives also include not being put behind bars for trumped up reasons or no reasons at all. It means health care and mental health care. It means reparations. We deny reality when we pretend the poverty inflicted on the black community wasn't surgically precise and tragically obvious. I won't go into all the ways Black America was blocked from the American dream because they are so obvious and quite frankly, White America, we just need to trust our black brothers and sisters on this. It's not that the details aren't important it's that they've been sitting in front of our faces for a few hundred years or so so we should already know them by now. If you don't that's on you to find out.