shout out lauren and her candles, cop them, get your vibe right 🕯
big ups dani, critics choice super awards was super lit, you killed it hosting 👑
shout out yedoye, out here booked, blessed, and depressed but that batman story looking type lit 🦇
no shout out to those dummies who you know threw a coup and then snitched on themselves by flicking it up on the gram 🇺🇸
shoutout linda ellerbee, just because (real ones know) 🌍
no shout out to miya ponsetto you fuckin clown lmaooooo 😑
shout out to miriam, out here dancing and giving me a contact cardio workout, my cardiologist thanks you 💃🏽
no shout out to shaun t, exposing my body’s weaknesses daily smh 🥵
big ups leah, moving into your own spot at princetón and got the dripped out cat 😺
white rage by carol anderson
for too long we have been asleep when it comes to domestic white terrorism but the underlying emotions behind the movements that fuel maga, the proud boys, the klan, etc has always been fear and anger. in a time when outrage is the normal emotion to wake up with when opening social media and a lack of a filter on conspiracy theories, allowing white fear and anger to be stoked, white rage shows the pattern of white response to black progress in the united states starting with slavery all the way up to obama's election. not only does it tackle the more extremist forms of white supremacy but it also encompasses the white liberal penchant for “not possibly being racist” or having a “racist bone in their body.” we are doomed to repeat history if we are never taught it, doomed to continue a pattern of behavior if it isn't highlighted, and if the january 6th insurrection isn't a powder keg in a second civil war to you, this book will highlight all the times that we have seen this behavior. 10/10, crucial reading.
think like the klan - steve harvey
ok this doesn’t exist but could you imagine?
stop expecting shame from people who have shown you time and time again that they are shameless
2021 resolution: limit exclamation point use, ya boy isn’t always excited
coup d’état was always on the books, a lot of y’all just weren’t reading the right ones
it’s going to be another war; you got to get ready to possibly be turned into a bagel
just seeing how some people can dish out a lot of shit but they can’t take it makes me terrified for any sort of open physical conflict where I need allies from twitter. i need to be fighting alongside people who know how to fight, put your brolic thumbs away.
i am all for dismantling ableist structures however if we go to civil war and you out here like “I have asthma,” you better pack an inhaler and bring them hands, my nigga
every white boy you let get away with terrorism built to this moment
no longer a comedian, i’m an afronihilistic depressionist
i hold myself to an impossible standard to prove to the world that it’s not impossible
dolezology - the study of white people’s obsession with claiming blackness
“awareness culture” has brought us to this point. action is necessary, no more performing awareness.
stop being shocked. stop saying something was revealed. stop saying “this is not who we are.” these things have always been there.
we will never win the battle for the soul of this country by bringing the moral high ground to a gunfight. if you’re shooting hoops in one on one and dude pulls out a gun, do you keep playing as if everything is normal?
there is a place in the social hierarchy that the vast majority of white people see black people and a lot of them, consciously all unconsciously, do their part to make sure that they go back there.
which drug is stronger: angel dust or white entitlement?
i have very little hope for white america, i hate to say it. the vast majority of people don’t realize that what we’re seeing today is a pattern of behavior. the people that do have historically had to survive whiteness which requires a deep and intimate knowledge of the triggers and ugliness results from white rage and white fear.
the analogy of “could you imagine what would happen if _________ was black?” is tired, dead that. we been known.
shame is the normalized social regulator however we have to stop shaming the shameless and also know that if you’re a car, shame is not the best fuel source.
an argument for removing the word “realized“ from everyday speech
if you can believe in life after love, you can believe white people can do anything if they’re supremacist enough
i am all for dismantling ableist structures however if we go to civil war and you out here like “I have asthma,” you better pack an inhaler and bring them hands, my nigga
i don’t trust anyone who says the coup isn’t american, this is unfortunately wild american
on december 30th 2020, i recorded a keynote speech for my college, calling for people to practice radical listening and divest from shame, things I really do believe in. of course within a week i wish i had said all different things. to be entirely clear, my speech was intended for the ears of people who feel lost in the battle for social justice and want to cut the tethers of normalized toxic social behaviors, not a continuation of decades of battling fascism with kid gloves. the insurrection made me sit down and really interrogate my ambivalence to all of it. i am a human being, i did feel for all of the people whose lives were in danger due to the domestic terrorist threat to the capitol however what i felt ties back to the unfortunate hood adage, “niggas die every day.” i feel for the family of this woman who got clapped in dc, she was a victim of these conspiracy theories and a lack of insight to why she was so gullible to believe them however she also went out of her way to attend a coup in the capital. i don't have to have the feeling that anyone else has to have; i'm going to focus on her humanity however it's not lost on me that she would have probably look at me and not see mine.
i am exceedingly patient with people. this isn't me gassing myself up this is everyone else telling me to stop doing this (sorry, valerie). i put a timer on my phone for 2 minutes and 30 seconds and scrolled through twitter predicting exactly what i would see on the timeline; the same 84 variations of comparisons of “if a black person had done this...” and “capitol police or not treating them like the black lives matter protesters from last year.” when my timer went off, i put my phone down and it started to interrogate my feelings. it wasn't quite apathy, it wasn't quite ambivalence. could it be that when i hear the word “american,” i have been conditioned to believe that that does not include people who look like me or come from backgrounds like mine? it wasn't that. took me a minute but what i landed on was feeling like “we've been here before, aren't people tired of saying the same things over and over again?”
in recent years, the time loop trope has taken on a new life in films like palm springs, tv shows like the twilight zone reboot and russian doll, and even in my own work with # that i wrote in 2016. why can't people see that we're living in one. don't people get tired of saying “this is not who we are?” at some point, does somebody snap out of the time loop? it always feels like people realize they're in the time loop and then willfully go back into it, with the exact same surprise whenever a cop gets off for shooting a black person or whenever a white person gets off for shooting up a church, a school, etc the next time it comes up.
the time loop is a prison for the people who are aware of this pattern but the prison is in the loop itself it is the other people who when we tell them it's a time loop, they look at us like we're crazy until they see the evidence that it is a time loop but, boom, the loop starts over. i said this in my keynote address to my university “as long as people of color’s progress is tethered to white awareness, tensions will build.” people of color, specifically black people, know the vibes, but so many people continue to come to the same point of awareness, with shock saying the exact same mantras every 3 to 6 months and if we can't even learn from our recent history, how are we supposed to learn from global history? how can we learn from 1939 if we can’t even remember 19 days ago?
same doldrums, same waves, over and over and over again. and i feel like all i'm doing is getting ready for the next wave.
every single white boy who shot up a store, a school, a church, a waffle house, etc that we saw get coddled after they created a domestic terrorist event and then were labeled a “lone wolf” led to this moment. the lone wolves became a pack and it wasn't on january 5th. this pack of lone wolves has existed in this country and in the world hundreds of years yet our intelligence community still pretends this is a new development. america is running out of closets for skeletons and not to mix metaphors but chickens are coming home to roost and the only thought that continues to enter my mind as we've been here before.
if you were surprised by january 6th, i'm not here to shame you. i want to invite you to keep your eyes open, don't look away, this doesn't disappear if we pretend it doesn't exist because it does. just because a sycophantic group wildly misled racists and xenophobes and their leader are being blocked from social platforms does not mean that that social platform ceases to exist. this isn't a game of peek-a-boo where when you cover your eyes the world disappears. this is an avalanche that continues to build momentum and if this is your first coup, please i implore you to pay attention more and be mad less.
the confederate flag flew in the capitol building something that didn't even happen during the civil war. it's almost as if the 1866 nba finals went down to the wire but the union won and the confederates continued to stay on the court for the last 200 years trying to get points in and they finally got one in.
the mirroring of these politicians under their desks hiding from an armed militia entering the capitol building with kids in schools doing active shooter drills because of stories like sandy hook, parkland, etc brings me no joy to highlight. it is an important comparison to make.
i have been obsessed with erving goffman lately and his theory of dramaturgy. sparknotes: all people have a front stage and a backstage the front stage where they perform for the world from everything about how they carry themselves to what they wear and a backstage where they are their true selves. i feel like in recent years do the social media we have had a disappearing backstage where every single thing that we do behind the scenes gets recorded then shared on the internet (oversharing, tmi, etc). of course this makes all the world a stage but i feel like there is an obsession with performance. performing joy, performing success, performing outrage, performing intellectualism, performing sexuality, performing masculinity (often to impress other men), performing femininity, etc and the irony is as america is full of performers, the country itself is the biggest performer of strength, capability, economic power, etc.
america is a country obsessed with performing power and success to the rest of the world however january 6th reminded me that a lot of people think that the gucci slides, gold chains and the ysl glasses, that america wears are real and not just flexing for the gram. being from a country that has had multiple coups, i've known the vibes and i know plenty of people who have been refugees due to a coup d’etat's and wars often funded or backed by america absolutely deserved their moment of schadenfreude; comedy punches up after all and who has the most power in the world. bingo. but that's not what i felt. i felt like reality finally set in. america, after two acts of flubbing its lines, missing its marks, and ignoring cues is being forced to see the reality of its own negligence to treat domestic terrorism with the same vigor that it did for terrorism around the world. the curtains are falling down, the sets are breaking, the audience is murmuring, chittering and people are getting up to leave. but the show must go on.
how does the country get back on track? way above my paygrade and i already have said everything that i have needed to say and rather than be upset that people aren't seeing what i've been saying, what every black person in this country, every native person, every nonblack person of color, i'm resigned to continuing to say it. pelosi is going to push forward with the 25th amendment or impeachment. symbolism, might help in the long run, but still feels so unreal. jack and mark zuckerberg finally developed part of a backbone and banned this fascist and his sycophants from their platforms. no jojo, but too little too late; how long have we asked for this. as somebody who is american in passport and name but often feels excluded from america, i'm going to stay in the audience cuz i for one am interested to see how america keeps the show going, especially since we've already seen this show over and over and over again.
a moratorium on saying that “representation does not matter” because unfortunately the outgoing president represented what every white man in this country wants; success, power, having sex with supermodels, to be their own boss, survive on a diet of big macs, etc for 14 years on television and while you may not have been watching it, i bet money that a lot of the people that made their way to dc on january 6th had their whole image of this man shaped by that television program. and at the very least maybe they're not enthralled by his success but he is the most important thing to a lot of them: white. we need to stop pretending our worldview ends at the tip of our nose and understand that other people's positionality informs their own worldview, one that might not be the diverse tapestry that most of my readers have. don't get it twisted, understanding another person's positionality does not mean that you agree with their views.
there is this reverence for america that i do not possess however i navigate people who really believe in america all the time. i don't want to take the wind out of their sails however i really don't get it. so many americans have stockholm syndrome, convinced to love an abusive partner even in the face of so many abuses. yes this country gives me a lot of privileges i would not have in mauritania or mali but daily i ask myself whether the cost is worth it. we can't “there’s plenty of fish in the sea” this one because this is supposed to be the best fish. yo new zealand, u up?
i won’t lie to you, i be singing hey soul sister to myself when i be in tj maxx.
I had no idea you had a newsletter until substance signed me up for it since I follow you on Twitter. I’m glad they did. I missed your writing.