Skip to main content

Am I Next


Lord, have mercy.
George Floyd of Minnesota.
Your nation failed you.
Rest in God's peace.
Kyrie eleison.

Christ, have mercy.
Breonna Taylor of Kentucky.
Your nation failed you.
Rest in God's peace.
Christe eleison.

Lord, have mercy.
Ahmaud Arbery of Georgia.
Your nation failed you.
Rest in God's peace.
Kyrie eleison.

Christ, have mercy.
Tony McDade of Florida.
Your nation failed you.
Rest in God's peace.
Christe eleison.

Four people whom I never new have been murdered. It is merely the tip of an iceberg. The details of each heinous act are so horrifically unjust that there is no sense to be made of them. Each of the four was victimized. Each of them was Black, but their race was not the cause of death. Each was murdered because of the systemic structures that endow white people with an unimaginable authority and privilege based on the perpetuation of lies. The onus is not on the victims but on the perpetuators and their oppressive and unjust systems.

There is also a realization that it could have been me. I could be laying cold and lifeless in the morgue because of a distorted perception of me rooted in lies. Maybe it will be me the next time - not because of who I am, but because of how you see me in relation to how you see yourself. What lies about me do you believe? What lies about yourself do you believe?









Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Intention

What fuels the hubris of racism  other than the people's refusal  to confront the intentional history of crafting the white supremacy lie?  The lies of the colonizers became the constructed sins of the nation  as they were crafted with the intention  of being an expanding yoke of injustice.   The yoke's intentional lies produce absurd but commonly accepted untruths  fostering actions, both committed and omitted, of reinforced oppression, privilege, and shame. Instead of aspiring for  justice,  the dominant group ignores calls for resolution and  dismissively bequeaths the unjust yoke to the intentions of tomorrow. The weight of yesteryear's enshrined sin is today's burden of lived experience until you give intention to the heavy lifting required to dismantle  the lies supporting the yoke.

When You Say, "I'm Not Racist"

When you say,  "I'm not racist," you deny the complexity of a system built on the racist ideas born of white supremacy. When you say,  "I don't see color," you do not understand that making judgements based on color is the problem, not seeing color.  When you say,  "I was taught to treat everyone the same," you deny the limitations of your being kind when the system denies my dignity. When you say,  "But, I'm a Christian," you deny the whitening of Jesus' body and the distortion of his Gospel for economic gain through the genocide of indigenous people, the enslavement of Africans, and other atrocities against people of color. When you say,  "My child is Black," you conflate your love for one person with a love for all. When you say,  "My family never enslaved people" you deny how the injustices of slavery were transformed to perpetuate your illusion of white supremacy. Wh

How Many Times

Before seeing a white man murder a handcuffed black man by kneeling on his neck in public, in broad daylight, how many times did you not believe perceived outrageous claims of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color because they were unfathomable to you?