You know you ain’t shit, right?
I spent the second half of 2016 talking to you, white people, telling you how you were fucking up. I wrote about how you consume Black creations and identities for your own gain; how you lie too fucking much, how you manipulate and silence Black people even when we’re living in constant trauma. I wrote about how you protect your nasty, entitled little monsters to the detriment of literally EVERYONE else. Your years of fucking up has led us to right now…and the hard lesson I had to learn was just how many of you want the fuckshit that’s happening or don’t care enough to even speak out against it, much less try to stop it.
I was naïve. I thought there was a majority of white people who tried to make things equitable, who wanted a better world. But these past two years have taught me that what you really wanted was a world where you could be as monstrous as you desired without consequences. That you were wholly invested in the perception of civility and humanity without actually doing the work. I learned that your version of winning was continued exploitation of others under the punishment of death and that as long as you were the one physically holding the gun, you were okay with it.
I tried to understand. In the beginning, I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I told myself that if I was patient and helped them understand what they were co-signing on, that you would change your ways. I foolishly thought that my humanity was understood and accepted, not a bargaining chip on the table that you were intent upon winning, even if you had to cheat.
Well, congratulations, white people. You won. You now have the country your ancestors fought for — your dream is now realized. Black people continue to be exploited and murdered by both cops and white civilians at will, with virtually no consequences. In fact, some of y’all even make money when you face any consequences for your racism.
Your sons, spouses, and friends continue to rape women and children with impunity. Black and brown people continue to be snatched off the street, from their homes, jobs, and their children’s schools.
We are forced to show identification, or detained by ICE whenever a random white person feels empowered to fuck up someone’s day, and white people continue to call the police on Black people just for being near them.
Brown veterans and non-violent brown people are forcefully deported regardless of their military service or immigration application status. The pool of youths available for sex trafficking has increased exponentially with the latest, sanctioned kidnapping of immigrant children at the border while others attempting to cross continue to be detained indefinitely or murdered at will.
Not to mention the sex workers who are being murdered thanks to shitty legislation that protects no one. Those living with disabilities are left to fend for themselves or die, as are the elderly. And the LGBTQIA community has had their rights whittled away one by one and women’s reproductive rights continue to be a target.
Black and brown people are fucking terrorized and worried about leaving their homes but we’re great because the military is working on the Space Force but with less science.
The United States voluntarily left the U.N.’s Human Rights Council, thereby cementing the plan to ensure that human rights are only intended for white people, mainly white men, and the administration has just rescinded protections for Haitian immigrants. So, all in all, white people are winning.
That last sentence is sarcasm, by the way. This is the kind of winning Charlie Sheen was talking about, where you make a series of fucked-up decisions and convince yourself it’s a good thing.
Yeah…That’s where we are, stewing in this “good” fucking thing.
The shit going on is intentional. Egregiously so. I’m constantly having to guard myself from the apathy and glee expressed by white people. It’s like you are finally realizing the dream of your ancestors, to continue being the worst fucking examples of humanity and wearing that shit like a crown. And you fucking KNOW what you’re doing. You KNOW and you do it or let it happen anyway.
No bullshit, I didn’t understand that prison was slavery until a few years back. I knew it was a place to avoid as best I could, but I didn’t understand the scope, destructiveness, and exploitative aspects of the institution until the past decade. I didn’t understand how people lived with slavery until I understood that I was one of those people. I let slavery happen around me and never did anything about it. I’ve lived alongside genocide my entire life and never bothered to understand it until recently. I am a bystander in the dehumanization and destruction of human beings, and the best I can do is be angry and send money because doing more is hard.
But you know. You know people with power. You know people in office. You know some police. You know some of them ICE terrorists. And no, “not all” of you know someone, but you know people who do and I expect you to do something with that knowledge.
I’m not even expecting much…just fucking stop lying about giving a fuck or actually give a fuck and do something. I want you either to wear your Melania “I don’t care” jacket with pride so I can know who the monsters really are, or to fucking exercise some of your goddamn privilege and DO SOMETHING.
The wonderful thing about these shitty times is that more white people are living their racist fantasies, so I don’t have to guess which ones are rooting for my demise anymore. All y’all ain’t shit till you own your place in this and do better. If you aren’t calling out this inhumane shit…if you aren’t fucking disowning your white supremacist relatives, if you aren’t exacting social, economic, and sometimes physical punishment on the people in your life cheering for or indifferent to this shit, then you are just like them. You are aiding and abetting this bullshit and you need to stop fucking lying to yourself about it.
Since I’ve started talking about oppression in many of its forms, I’ve had that shit weaponized against me, repeatedly. People I thought were my friends told me to shut up about it. White people I went to school with would speak up to tell me to shut up. I have watched my circle of acquaintances disintegrate and blow away as though Thanos had snapped his fingers and it’s all because I stopped letting people feel safe and comfortable in their bullshit lies about their privilege and the ways they enable white supremacy. I’ve cut off family and friends and myself been cut off by both because shit ain’t gonna change if we keep pretending it’s fucking fine.
You’re not good people. You are enabling global fucking harm and pretending that it’s fine.
White people created, protect, and enable a culture rife with self-delusion, so intent on amassing and maintaining a malevolently violent definition of power that they are gutting this planet and its people.
As a people, as a culture, you are willing to destroy anything that challenges your idea of power, often at your own expense. Your limited, short-sighted, wildly hedonistic, and venomous actions are astounding in their inhumanity. You have literally redefined “human” to only include those with a fucking skin mutation that literally makes the sun poisonous for you.
But you’re fucking winning. So, congratulations on openly promoting and encouraging others to engage in all the racist violence to their heart’s content. Should we survive your bullshit, I hope history remembers you accurately as the monsters who sought to rule the earth by destroying everything and everyone else on it.
Originally published at talynnkel.com.
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