Blog Post One
U-N-I-T-Y; That’s a Unity
Catch me on a random day and you may hear this anthem banging out of my car, my shower or my Echo speakers with me doing my best to match the vibe Latifah blessed the Hip Hop scene with more than twenty years ago. This is about the most irresistible song in the diaspora to not sing along in elation and agreement with however, today I am changing my tune.
Recently the word “unity” began to make its rounds on social media and in the news sphere following the terrorists attack at the Capitol carried out by those radicalized by the United States government. To no surprise of those of us who have witnessed countless collaborative and spineless acts by this government under the guise of “healing” and “moving forward”- Lincoln giving slaveowners reparations at the end of the Civil War, Gore conceding in 2000 and Kerry in 2004 and every American sham in between- both the Democratic and Republican party are utilizing any opportunity to claim that this country, stolen from Indigenous folks, cultivated through slave labor and maintained through the marginalization of poor and/or disenfranchised Black and brown people, isn’t exactly who it has always been: a terrorists state to the aforementioned groups.
Those on the left stood at the podium on the Senate floor to impeach the 45th President of the United States for a historical second time this past week and mindlessly remarked that “this is not who we are”. If given the chance to speak with one these well-meaning politicians ironically, I would retort the same phrase that Black people have exclaimed over the past four years to those across the aisle: “When was America ever great?”, when has this not been who “we”, heavy on “we”, are?
To me, this seemingly innocuous phrase, used as a means to quell tensions and jar a collective memory of America in the moments post 9/11, when we all became Americans, with exclusions applied, does just as much damage as the lies about a stolen 2020 election from the mouths and Twitter feeds of the White Supremacists in Chief and his underlings in the US Congress. Both are lies and both contribute to the delusions of white people in this country. an affirmation at best, telling the white majority of the this country that “this isn’t who we are,” is not only a falsehood at the least but it is indeed dangerous at most. It trivializes the deaths of Eric Garner, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor- cases where police interactions caught on tape or audio without any doubt of the cops' guilt; instead casts a shadow of doubt on people who were being Black while making a living on the corner, while trying to get by or while sleeping peacefully in bed after working a shift as a frontline worker in the midst of a pandemic. Dangerous. It sets back the true healing that needs to take place in the nation by failing time and again when giving the opportunity to redress the many instances of wrongs and why people belonging to the white male caste system in “the world’s greatest country”, another twisted delusion, would feel so disenfranchised to the point that they would storm the shiny city on the hill in a blood thirst rage. Perhaps the answer lies in the lies.
What’s your MELANINated Opinion?
