It Was Never Us

During the relationship with all of the people who live in the United States, Black people have endured the most discord, especially since we were not supposed to be here. There have been countless movements to create our own independence and autonomy, which have been thwarted by those who feel entitled to our labor. For most empires to exist, there must be countless exploitable individuals ensuring the comfort of others, and for Black people to have autonomy would mean the discomfort of others. We were called “wild” and “out of control” for engaging these movements, while people told us that we should all be “more polite.” The “peaceful” nature of the majority of the meetings, protests, and all of the current activism without us should demonstrate what we have been saying all along: it was never us.

Protests during 2020 were intense for two reasons. First, they were a response to the police brutality and general animosity towards Black people. Secondly, they were a response to vulnerable workers–also mostly Black people and people of color–being forced to work under terrible conditions while getting lower wages. There was a ridiculous amount of violence from the police, and instead of acknowledging the violence, people blamed Black people for instigating such a response. This is not unlike abusers who say things like, “Look what you made me do!” Recently, some people have been wondering where all the Black people are for boots-on-the-ground protests, but the reality is that we know that if a visible cadre of Black people get involved, that will be the day that the dogs, tear gas, militia, and the night clubs start to appear.

Furthermore, there were so many meetings that Black people attended on racial justice, myself included. All of those meetings tended to go the same way: Black people would discuss what needed to be done to include more equality, staff would hem and haw, and then art would be commissioned in the most invisible way. There were so many people who were interested in “learning,” which largely consisted of being entertained by trauma and doing their best to find the most “inoffensive” books to appeal to “delicate sensibilities.” Meanwhile, so many school districts were looking to take away all the “bad stuff” of “American history” so that people could maintain the status quo. These days, since the administration is destroying the Department of Education–which also feeds children two of the meals they could be eating every day, and provides reliable supervision so that everyone can work–it hardly matters what children are doing in school. More importantly, children are afraid to go to school when they could be attacked and held in detention.

Recently, there was talk of releasing George Floyd’s murderer from the Coup Facilitator and Cult45. Most Black people saw it as the bait it was: since we have largely remained home and started working in our own circles, people lost their toys. Other people could be up in arms about it, but so many people forget that we just spent five years‘ worth of energy explaining how racism works. We know that people like to bait us into violence, and then play the victim; that has been the playbook from the beginning of this empire. To me, this goes to show that people are much too obsessed with trying to harass Black people, instead of dealing with the problems at hand. We knew it, and too many people are losing their minds now that we see their tricks and ignore them. The country is dealing with a coup, and people are still trying to mess with us. How sad.

Since lies are being repeated so often at this point, people are very well aware that if a lie is repeated often enough, people begin to consider it fact. The lies that have been told about Black people have been included in history for so long, many people forgot that those lies began because of hating us. Privatization being better than public resources? Nobody wanted to have Black people in school or in certain businesses, needing us to stay vulnerable. Rather than face that reality and tell people with control and resources to get over themselves, people would choose to believe that we are dangerous, even when we are leaving people alone. I am simply pleased to note that despite everyone being desperate to call us whatever they want, we have demonstrated that we were never pro-violence.