TW: Police violence
I am estranged from my paternal family. I am estranged because the only time I see them is at funerals. It seems to be, and is a palpable, that it is death that brings us together.
It is DEATH that brings us together! It is the LOSS of something that gives comfort!
What I so desperately want my extended family to know–Black, White, Queer, Straight, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian-American and the like–stop letting it be DEATH that brings us together! I want there to be a realization of this legacy across this board–especially now!
There is a sadness in me that happens when this scroll of hashtags is added to that is beyond normal grieve or empathy. It is the realization this outpouring of love, solidarity, unity and support was only accomplished through LOSS!
With the compounded issues of poverty, environmental racism it makes police brutality that much more evil. That much more insidious! It makes the need to dismantle the idols of systemic racism and oppression–and police brutality is a tool of it! That tool, like the Scythe of the Grim Reaper, is wielded for the harvesting of the young, gifted and Black.
It is one thing to see the death of someone you one. It is another evil to see that evil recorded, added to a scroll 400 years long, and watch their murderers go free–because they ‘feared for their lives.’
Audre Lorde said, “The tools of the master will never dismantle the master’s house.” Meaning, you cannot tear down something the same way it was built! It will take all of us–and I mean all of us—to work past the flurry and fury of retweets and hashtags! It is bigger than blacking out your social media for a day to clout chase and for likes WHILE being a adamant supporter of this evil Orange Regime whom is selling underground graveyard tours!
The told of the master will never dismantle the master’s house!
It was racism and oppression that built this country–the idea of the “I” before the “we”: individualism before the collective. What will dismante this systems is the community at large–the vox populi–tired of seeing their fellow citizens in complete peril! When this nation acts like a community–supporting and loving one another beyond the recognition of the loss on a national scale!–we can dismantle this house. And set fire to the foundation.
It’s always bigger than a hash tag…
