Genocide by Design

You can save your shock.

📸: Carlos Gonzalez / Star Tribune

If I see another post about how this nEeDs tO eND, my eyes might really do that thing my mother swore they would do when I was a kid: roll so far back in my head they disappear.

My g. The United States hasn’t yet apologized for its role in slavery. Slavery.

SLAVERY.

You think, as a unit, it gives a fuck about… any of this? C’mon. It can’t even properly pretend.

How does the infamous saying go? “The past is never dead. It isn’t even past.” Why apologize for something that you A. don’t regret, and B. are still enacting in other, convoluted ways? (See: Rikers Island, San Quentin, etc.)

I mean, slavery is still in the Bill of Rights as a legal consequence. 13th amendment to the Constitution. 1865. It says it right there. ‘Slavery shall not exist, EXCEPT…’ It’s funny that growing up we were taught that was the year slavery was abolished.

It was really just the year it was legalized.

Imagine that. The worst blemish in the history of this nation. The legal extinguishing of an entire race. The story of this country since the mid-1800s has essentially been the long road back from slavery, and the generations its decimated. Kids are taught slavery was the worst thing ever.

And the shit is sitting there in the Bill of Rights. Chilling.

So, yeah. I roll my eyes hard as fuck at a lot of the social media propaganda that often follows the theft of a Black life. The feigned shock and awe. The ‘why aren’t we better than this?’ captions of despair. Oh, and my favorite. ‘They’re scared, ‘cause it’s being filmed now!’ or something about the advent of social media being a catalyst for the national divide on race relations.

Rodney King was brutally beaten by LAPD in 1991. On camera. I was eight when I got whisked to Amadou Diallo’s protest. We were still in high school when we taped Sean Bell’s photo to our bookbags. Miss me.

There aren’t any rules being broken. The system has not gone awry. Black people being treated fairly would be the glitch.

This is all by design.

I think what bothers me the most is how many people appear to not understand this. It’s the same cycle every time. The talking heads on CNN. The visible divide on social media. The rounds of news coverage consistently waning once the 48-hour window closes. The outrage from non-Black people usually disappears quicker than that. The threats and promises of change.

Some hotshot politician will get up on a podium somewhere and say something sharp about it. Something they and a couple strategists were up until 4 a.m. tweaking. The resulting video footage will be the anchor for an 18-month campaign. Maybe Governor. Senator. Desus & Mero will invite them on. So will The Breakfast Club. Kim Kardashian and her band of tokenists will free a couple niggas from the pen. Black-rapper-husband duties complete, she’ll quickly move onto the day’s slate of beauty and “mental health” content. That will become a news cycle of its own. And then boom, holiday shopping campaigns start to roll out.

Next.

It’s so predictable it makes me laugh. I honestly just cackled at how much like clockwork this all is.

Being Black is funny. You’ll be minding your damn business, watching Kyrie Irving highlights on Instagram. And then boom, a nigga dies in that little video box right before your eyes. Like he literally goes to sleep and it’s not for lols. A life, gone, right there. Snap your fingers with me. …2, 3, *snap*. Like that.

And it gets served to us just like anything else. Music video teasers, Doja Cat apologies, DaBaby Trillers. You can scroll past it all with the same irreverence. Casually. Like wow, that’s fucked up. Then, Oh shit, my battery’s dying, gotta blast.

How often do you stop to think about what death actually is? I hope not as often as I do. ‘Cause that shit is dark. Imagine going to sleep and never waking up. People cry over you, and you get thrown into the ground. No sequel. You don’t reincarnate like Moaning Myrtle in your preferred corridor of your past life. It’s just over. No more sunsets, no more laughter. Eyes wide shut. Forever. (Don’t think too hard about the concept of “forever,” while you’re at it. That’ll really fuck you up.)

Spiritual resolutions aside, that’s the reality of it.

That said, you know how evil you have to be to have the audacity to make that decision about someone’s life? That its expiration date is here? Which God do you motherfuckers pray to that this is so common? Based on pigmentation? The fuck?

To be frank, the explanation as to why things have only marginally improved in nearly half-a-millennium is, in my opinion, a lot more pedestrian than the aforementioned social dynamics.

The privileged just aren’t required to give a fuck.

I mean, think about it. When was the last time you went out of your way to support a cause that wasn’t directly afflicting you? How many times have you seen something causing tension or unrest to undocumented immigrants, or indigenous peoples, or the LGBTQ community, whichever of those you don’t categorically identify with, and gone out of your way to affect some type of positive change? You got enough going on in your own life, right? Can’t be taking on the hardship of others.

But the thing about America. The thing about white privilege. Its very existence, still in 2020, relies on the marginalization of Black folks. The white folks who can make essential decisions on Black art, run hip hop labels, host virtual town halls in the wake of a Black person’s lynching. They can exist in these spaces solely because Black people are seen as less than people. Solely. I can’t think of any other contributing factors.

Some are aware of this acute privilege. But systematically, no one makes that a problem for them. So why would they take it up on themselves to do anything about it? I’m really just thinking out loud here. Lunchin’, if you will.

Just think about the level of de-socialization that would have to occur just for folks to be truly aware of the state of America’s racial divide. Yes, we’re still on awareness in century number five.

Many Black people are still blaming their peers for the constant mistreatment and injustice. It’s always some self-righteous pundit in a stuffy three-piece suit sporting some gargantuan power knot talking about kids need to “pull their pants up” to earn some respect.

Tamir Rice was shot on a playground. He was 12. If he was wearing his pants upside down on his head, it wouldn’t have mattered.

Don’t get me wrong. At some point, regardless of how you were raised or taught, as an adult at some point you have to take it upon yourself to find and develop your own truths in this life.

At the same time, you are, after all, asking folks to undo years and years and years of brainwashing and conditioning. Some of it was done by the evening news and grade school teachers. Some of it infiltrated the home and got hammered home at nightly dinners. Everywhere you turn, “black” means animalistic. Terrorizing. Ominous. And “white” carries the dainty innocence of a dandelion. From the economy to porn.

Everyone isn’t gonna come out of that with their souls intact.

(Note: As I edit this piece, a video of prominent Black actor Shameik Moore is quickly going viral. In it, he suggests that Rosa Parks should have taken a cab. I’ve made my point, I hope?)

If you can’t even guarantee that Black people will be immune to that constant and longstanding socialization, imagine what that means for white folks? Imagine how much less incentive they have to stiff-arm these images that are constantly being fed to them? That shit is scary.

Please note, we’re still only talking about civilians. The police state itself is a direct derivative of the infamous “Patty-Roller” slave patrols, meant to keep the enslaved in line as they worked overnight shifts for massa. That whole “protect and serve” bullshit is supreme gaslighting. The NYPD. The patrol cars on the creep. The batons. The “boys in blue” mantra. Stop-and-Frisk. The smug look on their faces as they knowingly commit manslaughter and murder. It’s all taken right from plantation lore. Almost verbatim. And romanticized to the point of nausea.

So the next time you hear someone say there’s no such thing as a good cop. Believe them. I had family on the force. It is what it is.

Aside from the plausible deniability tactics so many of the privileged employ, education lies at the belly of this beast as well. You need to look no further than a White House press briefing to deduce that America has never placed a high premium on that. From what I understand, having a high IQ actually hurts your chances of becoming a police officer. They don’t want you thinking for yourself.

It’s like that scene from The Bourne Ultimatum when after much prodding and torture, Matt Damon finally decided to just pick up the gun and kill the terrified blindfolded dude in the corner of the room. Deep down he knew it was wrong. But to join the agency he was urgently trying to join, he needed to prove that he could follow orders. His bosses had done a number on him. He just wanted it to be over. “Who said I was saving American lives?” he rhetorically asked one of his tormentors, visibly distressed and confused about who he’d become under their guise.

“I was killing. For you. For them.”

I find that police activity in America often parallels that scene. Except you don’t have to beg, prod, torture or brainwash these uniforms to be fucking stupid. They come that way. High IQ cop? One that could challenge the racist ideals that govern their squad rooms? There’s no room for that, b. Smarten up.

Even outside of the legalized slave patrol, the general public just isn’t that smart. I hate to sound so callous with it, but it’s true. I’ve always been somewhat astonished at how many blatant idiots appear to hold important positions in business and society. We don’t live in merit-based communities. Optics and relationships run everything. People are allowed into spaces based on everything except what they can actually do. What they’ve actually done. Intelligence breeds empathy, but the idiots are running the asylum. Progress is capped before anyone can lift a finger to agitate.

This is why it’s long been important for white folks to start taking matters into their own hands the way Black people often try to. Not just supporting your Black counterparts in their activist ventures, but hitting the front lines with them. White people listen to other white people. They hold the only opinions that have ever mattered in this country.

Instead, what often happens? What happened in 2016. An uneducated racist scammed his way up the political ranks by degrading the very idea of Blackness on national television. And how did white people react?

That was four years ago. 1865 was 155 years ago. In one-hundred and fifty-five years, we moved maybe a centimeter forward on the path to equality. I don’t care how many new laws, amendments or bills have been passed. The proof is in the pudding. And it’s being spilled all over the streets.

None of this seems to really enrage anyone other than Black people. At any level. Kendrick Lamar goes 0-for-8 at the GRAMMYs, losing four of those awards to the Safe White Rapper You Can Play Around Your Kids at Soccer Practice, Macklemore, and no one dares to call it the blatant racism and marginalization that it is. There’s always some behind-the-scenes Smart Guy explanation. Dylann Roof murdered nine Black people in cold blood and got to hit the Burger King drive-thru after. We can’t even get past the basic hypocrisy. Where was the knee in his neck?

I’ll never, ever forget the night in 2015 when Caitlyn Jenner, f.k.a. Bruce, held her “reintroduction” interview with Diane Sawyer post-transition. I was in Midtown NYC (first mistake) with my cousin grabbing pizza after a night of drinking. As we ate, the interview played on a small TV in the pizza shop, and we watched along in awe. Regardless of your politics, surely you can freely admit that seeing a former Olympic champion and father to the most famous influencers on the planet reveal herself as a fully-fledged woman on national TV was certainly something to gawk at. Not disrespectfully, but it was a spectacle. That’s why she was on 20/20 in the first place.

Our casual observation of this fact was an issue for a woman who was leaving the shop. After we made brief comments to each other, to the effect of, “Wow, this is wild,” we were verbally accosted by, yes, a Karen. She was appalled at my cousin and I expressing anything other than gushing joy as a kneejerk reaction to the interview. Like we were inhumane for making the simplest objective observations to each other. We just stared at her as she hollered her way out of the shop and onto the sidewalk. Unmoved by her pathetic performative liberalism.

To this day, I have never personally seen a white person react that way to crimes against Black people. It’s always, damn, that’s wack. Never, fuck this I gotta holler down on some motherfuckers in this pizza joint. I used to work in SoHo and live in Virginia Beach, if you’re worried about sample size.

Until reactions from non-Black folks start reflecting the latter of those responses, we ain’t getting anywhere. Who are y’all trying to fool? Not my niggas, that’s for sure.

Have fun with them hashtags. And my guy Stokely.