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In 1705, a Virginia law was passed requiring masters to provide white male servants whose indentured time was up with 50 acres of land, 30 shillings,10 bushels of corn and a musket.
Whose land were they given? Why was a musket deemed a necessary part of the deal?
Read MoreWhite people self-righteously declaring that “violence is never the answer” is… not a good look. The utter hypocrisy when white culture and white American culture was FOUNDED on violence is entirely predictable yet exhausting just the same. The ENTIRE PREMISE of whiteness is violence. Whiteness was created explicitly and purposefully to justify and perpetuate violence.
So yeah.
Read MoreIt’s been a tough week of news out of Ukraine.
I have been trying to take special care and to be aware of the different and perhaps invisible ways that we all might be variously impacted, on top of everything else that is going on. I am noticing my responses, managing my energy, and trying to stay focused on where I can make a difference.
As the days passed though, I’m noticing other things.
Read MoreCan we talk about white violence?
Can we talk about white parents who bought their son a gun as an early Christmas gift?
Can we talk about the kind of white entitlement where a parent either assumes their son won't harm others or doesn't care that he might?
Read MoreBy Malaika Aaron-Bishop
The thing about rage is that it leaves in its wake a kind of emptiness. For me, this emptiness is in some ways more debilitating than all the swirling, vengeful chaos that came before. Sometimes, all I can manage is to crawl into the darkness and hold on.
Outside, there is a hush, but even in the quiet there is evidence of broken trust, generations of social contracts violated. Shards of glass in shades of green and red and brown; bits of rubber, burnt and frayed; a mangled barricade hapless, and cast aside; bits of cloth lost among fallen leaves and branches; we all mingle among dust and debris. Where once there were people risking their lives and livelihoods to demand justice for themselves and their communities, there are only warped canisters, used and discarded, laying forlorn among the gutters. Some still dribble faint pools, stinging with shame, while the children and elders accosted and demonized for performing their civic duties go home to wash their eyes.
Read MoreBy Malaika Aaron-Bishop
Today I woke up with fury lighting my fingertips and a pain in my core so deep that relief seems a comic, desperate apparition. It’s a pain that erases my past and kidnaps my future. Every hug, or walk, or daydream session with my mother, every Malta or metemgee served with a side of life-advice from my aunties, every chuckle with my sisters, every note learned from my father, every laughing gift from my brothers. Gone. Every smile that ever was, and every adventure I ever embraced. Undone. An Easter-time kite flown on the Sea Wall? Lost. A library book, and sweet colourful popcorn on Grand Anse beach? Vanished. Hunting for jamun in dense Plymouth greenery? Gone. Oddly shaped clouds set against clear Mullet Bay skies? Snuffed. Crisp, fragrant winds atop Table Mountain? Incinerated. All remnants of a life I thought mine, all the best parts of me that ever was and that ever will be, stolen, held hostage, beaten. Lynched. Today, I am strange fruit.
Read MoreAdam Toledo, 13. Travon Chadwell, 18. Anthony Alvarez, 22. Iremamber Kykap, 16. Daunte Wright, 20.
All Black and brown boys killed by police in the last two weeks or so.
This is America, getting "back to normal." This is America, working exactly as designed.
I think we need to be talking not just about white privilege, white fragility, white supremacy or even police brutality but about white violence. It’s embedded in the history, the culture and all of our systems that impact our every day reality.
Read MoreWe need white people to stop asking for "respect" and "kindness", and for "judgement free" space, and to be assumed to have "good intentions."
We need white people to stop saying they didn't mean to cause harm.
Because you may not have intended it, but the harm you cause is not an accident.
Read More
