Have you ever ridden the Swing Ride at the amusement park

Have you ever ridden the swing ride at the amusement park? You know the one that when it starts up it doesn't swing back and forth but spins you around and around, higher and higher, faster and faster. You come off it dizzy, wobbly legs that can't keep you upright, head paining and loopy, nausea roiling.

The world doesn't stop spinning, then you throw up. It's the kind of ride you know you should never have gone on in the first place. You know it's a bad idea before it starts, but after you're already buckled in when it's too late to stop. I've been on that ride one time too many in my life. 

But you know how these things go, you convince yourself that maybe it wasn't the spinning and spinning, round and round in a circle that made you throw up the nothing contents in your stomach. You try the ride again only to realize you were right the first time, this is hell and now you're stuck.

It's 2021 and I think we're stuck in hell. 

And I really want to get the fuck off this ride. Because like any truly awful nightmare, it's spinning too fast with swings coming loose and smashing the riders to bloody bits. But I can't stop it. 

It's 2021 and the world knows what Black people have suffered. They, we know that Black people were chained as slaves. Slaves. I say that word a lot lately, I really roll it around in my mouth. I slide my tongue over the S and the L, they're the same height so I can move across those two letters easily. What I'm looking to feel is the drop. The sharp drop off from the L to the a. It's steep. 

Abrupt. But that's what I want to feel, that plunge. Because it makes the word ungainly. Awkward. I want that awkwardness, the boxy rectangle with edges. I want to know the contours that don't fit my mouth. It brings the word alive to me. 

"We were slaves."

Then I laugh. Because how goddamned weird is that?! Slaves. It's like a relic from some long-ago story. Once upon a time, when pharaoh's trod the earth, palm fronds waved by naked children cooled the desert heat from their brows. While down below in the city men and women worked under the threat of the lash to haul…

We were slaves.

I don't believe I really believed in slavery, really understood it as my own reality. As the reality of my family, my mother, father, grandmother. My family were slaves. We were forced to work for white people.

My god that sounds ludicrous, insane, made up. When I try to ground it in the real, I fail. I lose my way. Words don't come. I hit a wall, invisible, but solid nonetheless. You know what makes it real though? The tears. The stupid, empty tears that constantly squeeze from my eyes. 

Oh. And the furious rage I feel. It's not small and it's not benign. It's a rage and hatred that are secretly nursed every day. Nursed in some part of me that I have no control over. A part of me, that if you were to ask me to find this hidden place I would be lost. I wouldn't be able to locate it. 

It's fed by the secret spring of thin white mouths that dare to smile at me. Dare to ask me to smile back at them. Are you asking me to forgive you with that smile you have the gall to aim my way? I won't even acknowledge your presence. I look directly at you and walk past. I don't bother to cut my eyes at you, don't bother to lift the corner of my mouth in the fake smile that would make it alright for you.

I don't care. I want you to know my contempt. And that's when I bother to note your offensive presence at all. 

Seventy five million people live in a reality of their own making. 75 million people believe Donald Trump is president, that the election was stolen. They believe it's okay to steal, lie and cheat because in the funhouse mirror of their minds, these are virtues. 75 million people believe they are good and right. They believe it's good to kneel on a person's neck for nine long minutes because that person deserved what he got. 75 million people believe it's okay that billions live in poverty and that slavery was "not that bad."

75 million people believe that other people's lives should be lived in service of theirs.

And millions of others watch them and are appalled. You can't understand the delusion. I can. And so can millions of Black people of every shade. We've watched it for 400 hundred years. We see where this fooling yourselves leads, directly to the mental breakdown that the 75 million are going through right now.

You will go there too. 

Because you know that slavery was real. You know that slavery was terrible. You know that slavery was a sin you can never wash off, "Out damned spot indeed." You know that many of us who live with inequality and injustice today do so because you allowed it. And you're still letting it happen. 

Every day you withhold reparations from us, that you don't pay the trillions you owe brings you closer and closer to the cognitive dissonance the 75 million feel. They can't live in the real world with their crimes and their hate, so they make up bigger and wilder and more outrageously unbelievable stories to get through their day. Of course these stories are entirely believable to them because they have to be.

You see this insanity and you don't stop it. You talk about the markets, about diversity and equity and inclusion - who the fuck wants to fit into your spaces? Not me. I know madness when I see it. I've had 400 years of it passed down to me through my blood. I rejected it then and I push it away now. This is your ride. You made this, you thought of the worst you could do and you made it real. Me and mine are just collateral damage.

As red and wet from the ravages of your ride as we may be, we've developed callouses. We will heal, stronger than your lillywhite softness that's too afraid to do real work. Hard work. And we will tear down this system that you've made to give you life while siphoning our lives. We will destroy white supremacy because it's the only thing to do. 

We will do it one story at a time. All of us who've been voiceless for too long will scream our pain to the universe and we will be heard. And like Jacob and his trumpet, we will end your blood-sucking reign and bring down your evil empire. And if you don't help us destroy the system that will force you to live like normal, everyday people we will watch you become one of the 75 million, lost in your sickness, denying reality.

Because if you refuse to destroy white supremacy it will destroy you.

What is my passion? Destroying white supremacy. How will I do that? By elevating the everyday voices of people whose names aren't known, giving them a platform to tell their stories. Because when we're all singing and raising our voices together we will reach that note that brings down the evil empire. 

The ride is getting faster people. The crash is coming.