Mental Health & MLK Day - 1/17/22
I'm sitting here listening to Martin read his letter from Birmingham Jail and it reminds me once again how the well meaning and not so well meaning white people weaponize his words in order to further their agenda. Whether it be to bring back what they see as the "docile" black man or it is to "remind" Black people that even our own leaders words can and will be used to further an agenda of intolerance, bigotry and hate.
At what point did this country think that we were so far removed from our own history that we could not remember what our leaders wanted for us?
If we can still internalize the pain that our forefathers went through on the middle passage, or cringe at the thought of an overseer's whip, what makes you think that we have forgotten what our leaders truly meant?
When we say that we could never forget, we don't say that to blindly drive a point home, we say it in order to remind you that we, unlike YOU, have chosen to not gloss over the truth of this countries atrocities. We have chosen to live with the collective pain that has been wrought upon us in order to remind ourselves of where we have come from and what we are still, to this day; struggling against.
We have not forgotten the reality of violence that has been used to silence our community. And on this day of days, your dismissive and presumptuous words only help to further our march to freedom along.
You have not silenced us by misquoting a man that you and your ancestors helped to murder. The irony is those same words that you use like grenades, those words that caused you and yours to become so angry that the thought of a black person or their white companion sitting quietly at a lunch, would spur you to violence that you claim to abhor.
Every time someone tries to use what Dr. King said in order to tell me, us; that we should be quiet, that we should stand down and let the wheels of justice do their thing. I am reminded of every time that those same wheels spit in our face.
It is this justice system that you speak of that built the laws that Dr. King fought against. The same laws that imprisoned him for simply wanting to be a free man. It was this justice system that you are so proud of that decided the color of someone's skin made them less than a human being. So excuse us if we choose to not listen when you tell us of the impartiality of that same system.
So I say this to you - No! we have not come so far, and No! we have not reached the promise land. But Yes! we will not stop until there is true equity in this world, and Yes! we will march, sing, chant, shout, cry, argue and fight as long an you continue to tell US what OUR leader meant when he spoke.
MY MENTAL HEALTH - I took a long long long mental health break. I do this often in response to the pandemic, isolation, my own struggle with depression and anxiety and for that I apologize.
I want to be present every minute of the day but more often than not I am trying to keep my head above water and that takes the form of stepping away so that I can breath in silence.
- Britt (Slightly Annoyed Mixed Chick)
Juneteenth -
I thought I would be happy, like over the moon, but the way white people are reacting over it is killing the high.
We've been celebrating Juneteenth for as long as I can remember, but white people are acting as if they gave us a gift.
Well here's the thing BOB - THERE WOULD BE NO NEED TO CELEBRATE JUNETEENTH IN THE FIRST PLACE IF WE HADN'T BEEN ENSLAVED!!!!!!!!!
In your glee, ya'll have seemed to forget why we have it in the first place. This wasn't a countries independence from a crappy overlord from across the pond.
This was the end of the forced enslavement of millions of innocent men, women, and children. It was literally the end of mass genocide...........................
Oh, Wait! it didn't end and it hasn't ended, it's just changed.
Like seriously shaking my head over here.
It almost feels like a repeat of what Stokely Carmichael said on October 29th, 1966 when he spoke at Berkeley college.
" I maintain that every civil rights bill in this country was passed for white people, not for black people. For example, I am black. I know that. I also know that while I am black I am a human being, and therefore I have the right to go into any public place. White people didn't know that. Every time I tried to go into a place they stopped me. So some boys had to write a bill to tell that white man, "He’s a human being; don’t stop him." That bill was for that white man, not for me. I knew it all the time. I knew it all the time.
I knew that I could vote and that that wasn’t a privilege; it was my right. Every time I tried I was shot, killed or jailed, beaten or economically deprived. So somebody had to write a bill for white people to tell them, "When a black man comes to vote, don’t bother him." That bill, again, was for white people, not for black people; so that when you talk about open occupancy, I know I can live anyplace I want to live. It is white people across this country who are incapable of allowing me to live where I want to live. You need a civil rights bill, not me. I know I can live where I want to live." - Stokely Carmichael, Black Power Speech