racism

If you can’t stand the heat…

Posted on by karyn lynn morton

“Women want too much”

“Black women are too aggressive”

“Older women with children aren’t desirable”

“Less than perfect women should not expect to be protected and provided for by a man”

“Strong women don’t intimidate men… unless she thinks strong means aggressive, rude, unpleasant, and outspoken”

Strong, old, Black, too short, too tall, too big, too skinny, and just people with vaginas say a rousing… Fuck you! The Trumps, Richard Spencers, Robert Fischers, Kevin Samuels, Umar Johnsons and all the men who subscribe to their particular brand of women hating can also grab a seat on the Fuck You train. Men who have taken credit for women’s accomplishments, deemed us too weak and not smart enough, or James Evan’ed us to the kitchen and the bedroom instead of the lectern, boardroom, classroom, or wherever the hell we wanted to be… fuck ya’ll too! Check this out, real men don’t sit around dissecting and dictating who and what women should and can be. Men with time to focus on what women are doing or not doing should perhaps find another job, lift some weights, pick up a hammer or chisel, do some carpentry or masonry, or choke on BBQ smoke. Pick one.

Sexism is a tale as old as time. Before a White man ever thought about enslaving a Black man, he was controlling his wife. Many extremely smart women in the 19th century and early 20th century never married, such as Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Caroline Hershel, or their accomplishments were credited to their husbands. Women feigned being dense or dim-witted to marry, because men weren’t interested in smart women, but women who would bear them heirs, look pretty on their arm, curtsy, and make a good biscuit for their tea. Sadly, not much has changed. Women who champion feminism and the rights of women, or those whose successes brought about the need for that championing are looked at as aggressive, masculine, independent, and uninterested in male companionship, marriage, child-bearing, and things the patriarchy paints as feminine. This is true across racial lines, and especially true, a remnant of both racism and sexism, for Black women.

Here is a truth… as a collective, NO other group of women in history have been as abandoned and abused, and then victim blamed as Black women. None. Our victimization has been at the hands of men: men in power, particularly White men, and men we share blood or affinity to, particularly Black men. Those are facts. Slavery separated us from our ancestral families in Africa and the ones we created in America. We were forced to bear the slave children of our Masters, creating an emotional wedge between us and our slave husbands. The Civil War left us without husbands, alone to raise children, who fought on the front lines for a country that would never treat us fairly. Jim Crow and Black Codes destroyed the communities of color we built, leaving us destitute and unable to feed, clothe, and house ourselves. Black women were forced to take on maid and mammy roles while Black men were forced out of the job market. Desperation and unjust laws left them jailed and us alone to raise kids with no men in the home, practically destroying the Black nuclear family.

Today, remnants of watching our single mothers struggle but persevere while knowing our father’s chose not to participate in our family reside just under the surface. We watched our brother’s take on man roles in a child’s body, and now see them struggling to overcome the stigma of incarceration. We remember our uncles, real and play, teaching them that manhood was about how many women, cars, and dollars you could stack and never showing emotion, compassion, or vulnerability. We see them mistreating our friends and sisters, helping themselves to whatever we have and leaving us worse off than we started. We stay at Friend of the Court trying to get them to help buy a pack of diapers or help pay for DeVanté, who looks just like his trifling ass, go to the private school so he can be a doctor like he always talks about. Before you get in your feelings, YES, there are plethora of Black men, men period, who are excellent husbands, fathers, friends, and leaders. We salute you!!! 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 But for any man to spend his time determining that how we broadcast strength and resilience is wrong and indicative of our worth, without acknowledging what we have been through… he might want to consider that he is just further victimizing us with his judgement and patriarchal bullshit. Fuck you guy.

You want us in the kitchen frying your pickerel in lace underwear, real booty banging, hair laid (and it can be weave as long as you can’t tell), smiling and calling you King. But fish grease pops, so when we put our clothes back on we are rude, when we tie our hair back we are aggressive, and when we stop smiling we are rude. No, we just got fucking burned… but we keep on cooking. It’s you who can’t stand the heat bruh… so back your ass up out of the kitchen until your balls drop, you can grab them, and come help me tend to my burns. Until then, keep your fucked up opinions to yourself. How I exhibit strength is MY BUSINESS. If you don’t like it, then go find a woman you like, cuz the fact that you are talking about it MEANS that you are single af. Figure out why that is before you lay out your philosophy on why some woman, you don’t want, acts in a way you don’t agree with. Newsflash… she likely doesn’t give a fuck!

Your homework: Before you write a dissertation on why certain women are so undesirable, figure out why nobody wants you?!?

Women are always caping for men… all women. We keep your secrets, help you hide bodies, and cover your abuse with Maybelline… because we want to help make you better before we give up in you. But we are sick of your abuse, your judgements, your dominion… and we won’t continue to be your victims. We can be bad by ourselves. We can choose who and what we want to be. We can exist, live and breathe and walk and talk, without seeking your approval. And the entire truth is…

“Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.” 1 Corinthians 11:9.

Get it right!

black is the magic color

Posted on by karyn lynn morton

This isn’t about Black Girl Magic or Black Boy Joy. In fact, all magic isn’t good… and that’s what I’m here to talk about today ladies & gentleman, boys and girls. Black is the color of American racism… it’s the color that most threatens White supremacy and privilege, the magic color of hate and racism. So today, this, this is about calling that out, and simultaneously honoring the lives and protesting the deaths of Trayvon, Mike, Alton, Amadou, Breonna, George, Philando, Akai, Freddie, Oscar, Jordan, Ahmaud, Daunte, Atatianna, Sandra, Tamir, Ma’Khia, and all of our other murdered Black people at the hands of White people and police officers that most often goes unpunished.

Murders supported by the powers that be, per their lack of action.

I’m all for anti-discrimination legislation. Full stop.

Black people have a history of enslavement that dates back to the 1600s in America. We were the subject of Black Codes which limited our movement in post-slavery America; legal lynchings; Jim Crow practices in the South that maintained segregation; and continuing programs, policies, and legislation in housing, education, finance, employment, and politics in national, state, and local levels. While the 14th Amendment and Title VII have been enacted to seemingly deter racism, these and other anti-racism and anti-discrimination laws do little to stop the outright racist killings of Black people, even unarmed Black people.

The Dyer anti-lynching law was introduced in 1918, to make lynching illegal. 103 years later… ONE HUNDRED THREE… this bill is still awaiting passage in the Senate. 103 years. The act of hoisting a Black body from a tree limb, in public, by a rope, from the neck, is not EXPRESSLY illegally federally, after that practice claimed so many lives throughout Black history in America. One hundred and three years later we are still waiting for that law to pass Congress. Yet in 1998, James Byrd was effectively lynched by being dragged by truck until his head was severed. Black is the color of racism.

In 1999, 22 years ago…TWENTY TWO… Amadou Diallo was shot by police officers after being mistaken for a rapist, while unarmed. He was shot several times in his armpits, showing he had his hands up in surrender to the police. Yet just a few days ago a thirteen year old child, shown in a video with his empty hands raised above his head, was killed by police, and a young lady defending herself with a kitchen knife against adult women at her own home was shot and killed by a police officer, no deescalation tactics used. These kinds of stories come every few months if not every few days. So many times White police officers enter situations involving Black people and deadly force is the only tactic they recall, not deescalation, disarming, crisis management, nothing. The only skill they recall with Black people is how to fire bullets into our bodies. Yet Dylan Roof killed Black parishioners in a church and got Burger King after, and probably his choice of Coke or Sprite. Black is the color of bias.

In 1998, along with James Byrd, Mathew Shepard was murdered, but not because of his race, Shepard was a White gay male. In 2009, Congress passed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act which added gender and sexual orientation to the 1969 Hate Crimes Act, and removed the requirement for race based hate crime victims to be engaged in certain federal activities. The law did nothing to make lynching a federal crime and is known as the Mathew Shepard Act because of its sweeping addition of gender and sexual orientation based additions to the law. While we can all agree it was a necessary and needed piece of legislation, Congress failed to effectively legislate on a practice that Black people in America had feared and faced for hundreds of years. Black is the color of inequality.

In 2020, COVID-19 spread throughout America. In part due to the then administrations messaging regarding the virus being a “Chinese virus” due to it’s impetus in Wuhan, China, anti-Asian attitudes heightened in America. This led to the introduction of the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act. This came to a head on March 16th when six Asians were killed in Atlanta. By April 22nd, just yesterday, the bill had passed both the House and Senate. It will surely become legislation once signed by President Biden. While we can all agree this is a necessary and needed piece of legislation, Black people have been being shot and killed by police and targeted by racists with weapons they should not have since well before COVID. Yet police and gun reform remain elusive, and people still coddle and make excuses for White people who murder Black people. Black is the color of injustice.

Hate, bias, discrimination, injustice, inequality… are all colored with the Black crayon in American culture. Devoid of light… dark… negative… unworthy. But we know better. We know we are enchanting, captivating, joyous, charming, fantastic, mystical, mysterious, desirable, amazing, miraculous, and magical. Black is not the absence of light, it is the physical absorption of every hue of visible light. We must act like we know who we are despite how others might try to convince us otherwise!

We must demand better. We must use our vote, our financial power, our voices to demand better. We can post Black Lives Matter memes and Black fists raised in solidarity in social media all day, but until we truly hold America accountable for the way it backseats Black life because of the notion that our magic makes them disappear, those posts hold no weight and don’t elevate us. The haters already know we are magic…

“Hate won’t get you high as this
Levitate, levitate, levitate, levitate”-Kendrick Lamar

What is Caucasity

Posted on by karyn lynn morton

Oh the caucasity…

It is the express or implied utter audacity to say or do something knowingly out of sheer White privilege or supremacy. It is also a group activity where White people react and respond to that audacity with surprise, amazement, confusion, denial at the heinous activities of those of Caucasian descent that they would demonize from another racial group. So now that we know what it is, a little talk on it…

So this past weekend I was literally disgusted by and simultaneously baffled by the Woody Allen documentary Allen v. Farrow. The movie documents Woody Allen’s obsession with Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter and his sexual abuse of her as a child. It also highlights his relationship and marriage to her older adopted child, Soon-Yi Previn. Moreover, however, it highlights Allen’s adoration even during and after these allegations and the media’s vilification of Farrow and questioning of the truthfulness and memory of his victim. It made me angry that I loved the movie “Blue Jasmine” and had watched and supported it, after knowing of his marriage to Soon-Yi, even though his sexual abuse of Dylan Farrow I was unaware of. Like my utter distaste and disgust for R. Kelly, I took on a similar feeling of Allen. But I watched these White actors and actresses, as Allen’s films rarely have any people of color, call him genius, brilliant, praise him, gush over his talents and his personhood. The caucasity.

Woody Allen is a vile creature. He ruined the lives of these women and their mother by sexually abusing them in the home she chose to share with and welcome him into. These women will forever be traumatized by his presence and America’s adoration of him… not just as an artist but as a man. These actors and actresses were aware he was married to the adopted child of his partner of 12 years and had at the time allegedly molested her other daughter. He predicated his financial support of his other children, biological or adopted, with Farrow on then condemning their mother and sister publicly. He is a monster. Everyone should agree. White, Black, Puerto Rican. The act of dismissing this, especially so strongly in the White community… caucasity.

Piers Morgan & Sharon Osbourne… the British caucasity… it’s international. So first, royalism is a code word for racism when it insinuates that a Black person in a royal role is somehow against the royal code. It is no different than that former President questioning the birthright of Barack Obama to be the President. So, defending that shit is what… you guessed it… caucasity. It is also something else… racism. Defending racism is racist. You don’t have to lynch Black peole to be racist. You can sit next to and touch Black people and be racist. You can claim to have Black friends and be racist. You can never have called a Black person a nigger and be racist. Defending racism makes you racist. Period.

But for Sharon Osbourne to have the express gall to tell a Black person, who was actually extending grace to her racist sympathizing ass, how to react in a conversation about racism… ooooh chile. Sheryl Underwood should have Queens of Comedy’ed her ass and cussed her out to the white meat. That was some of the most extreme caucasity ever. It was also dangerous. I don’t promote violence… but folks have been jumped on for much less. Plus, you can’t hide behind being British. You just racist. I don’t care if you live off the Nile in a small home, you have tribal marks, and you are mashing casava for tonight’s fufu… if you are White and you defend racism or you try to judge what a Black person experience’s due to her race, you racist and you are displaying pure caucasity.

Apparently there is a documentary in the college admissions scandal with Aunt Becky. I don’t have the energy to talk about that at length… just know this… folks been worried about getting in trouble using someone’s Southfield (a close suburb of Michigan) address so their kid’s could escape the reality of their poor Detroit neighborhood school if they couldn’t afford or didn’t want to pay for private primary school. That’s for a basic kindergarten through twelfth grade education… that everyone needs to get a minimum wage job. But we got millionaire’s paying for kids to gain admission to a university and taking photos rowing for scholarships when Madison can’t even swim?!? What is you doing Rebecca?!? You can PAY for these brats to go anywhere in the country where they can legitimately gain admission… do that. Don’t display this level of caucasity please…

It’s simple… White people don’t get to play by different rules and the rest of us are going to be silent about it. Nope. We are calling you tf out. If you believe that White privilege and supremacy are tools that you should use to gain advantage, you are a ridiculous and racist person… and you are the poster child for caucasity. Know what it is, reject it, or be labeled. It’s simple. And Black folks will gather others together in the name of caucasity if they want to join… cuz that shit is wack.

Bash Mister’s Head Open…

Posted on by karyn lynn morton

Did you finish it!?

I know you know it.

“…and think about Heaven later!”

Amen!

Everyday it seems, there is a moment that highlights for me the strength and resilience of Black women who stand in their Blackness and their womanhood. Today was no different. Today’s manifestation gave me greater insight on two groups I don’t belong to… black women (as distinctly opposed to Black women) and coy White women. As women, we couldn’t be more different.

So Black women don’t have the luxury of privilege and protection that White women do or the luxury of patriarchal privilege that White men do. We have to stand up, put our hands on our hips, and let our backbones slip with some stank on it… particularly professionally and socially. We are at the height of a pandemic where simple things like using safety measures to protect oneself are discouraged by our world leader, when the pandemic is having its most major affect in racially diverse and heavily populated areas. We have to be real clear on where we stand. Black people are continually brutalized and murdered by wayward police officers, so we have to be real clear on where we stand. Our incumbent President can’t open his mouth to declare white supremacy a human rights violation, so we have to be real clear on where we stand. We also have to be clear on who we stand in fellowship with, allow in our circle and blindly support.

For clarity, black women belong to the Black racial group but they often see their racial culture as secondary to the other cultures they belong to… women, evangelical Christian, wealthy, whatever. So instead of experiencing their race and sex and class and culture intersectionally, they backseat their Blackness. So they find themselves often in some sort of struggle when they have to defend and stand up in their Blackness with their evangelical, wealthy, White cohorts. People they usually have more affinity to than folks who look like them.

Data shows… White evangelicals overwhelmingly voted for Trump, at 76%. 55% of White women voted against their own interests to vote for Trump with 61% of White men. 54% of those who make over $100K did as well. (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/exit-polls-president.html). So if these are your folks, you need to know these facts. If you are a black woman, you have to get real clear about where your faith and your tolerance collide. Personally I see no issue. God commands us to love, so as God’s soldier you mandated and indoctrinated with the purpose of calling out hate, whether it is rooted in race, gender, sexual orientation, class, whatever. You should have no problem condemning hate and every instance of it… socially, professionally, even politically. That’s the cause you take up as an evangelical. But again numbers don’t lie… so look your White evangelical friends and colleagues and customers in the face… be real clear or not, the choice is yours. But when they spit back racist, sexist, homophobic, classist vitriol… and you’ve been silent…

“… in yo face/open yo mouth, give you a taste.” -Missy Elliot

It is most likely that 76% of your White Christian friends see you as “a good black” and are okay with the rest of us jungle heathens going back to hellhole countries despite having a much larger ancestral claim to America, as we know it, than they do. If you are okay with that… sobeit. You black, it’s all good. But if you are Black, this is your friendship mantra, and you aren’t afraid to go tell it on the mountain…

“We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” -James Baldwin

Be clear, I have friends and acquaintances of many a hue. However I’m very clear about how differently we are allowed to see life. Some shit I can’t ignore or blindly accept. Other shit I just cannot do. Unless I’m surrounded by folks who look like me who make decisions, chances are I’m going to be seen as a problem professionally. I’m smart, assertive, outspoken, and equally skilled and talented. I’ve had to learn how to fight for me. I don’t have the luxury of whining and looking for barriers of protection. But white women…

Do.

On more than one occasion I have witnessed a White woman’s response to mistreatment or unfairness. It’s like watching her sink in quicksand, hand just outstretched, no fight, no struggle, just this assurance she’d be saved. Often she was. But now I know why it took so long to let women become soldiers… cuz they (White women because Black women been fighting) are gonna scream, drop their weapon, and go hide behind their captain. It’s the same way they vote for their husband’s instead of their own… phantom protection. Be clear sis… he likely dislikes you more than he dislikes Tyrone. Racism is rooted in American society, Sexism is rooted in the American family.

So while coy white women , cuz White women like Black women are not a monolith, are trying to show integrity to people who will lie to them and sabotage them, mainly White men… they willingly shrink instead of bossing up to fight. And for a Black woman who is used to being second guessed, called to prove her worth, sabotaged because I’m so fucking dope and they know it… that captain save me, lily livered, weakassery has no place in my life and it just sounds like desperation and quitting had a baby named Sarah. Stop it. Put on those big girl panties he hates so much and grab a choppa. Blow up his spot by calling out his sexism and highlighting his each and every wrong. Don’t shrink, grow up and strap on your Nancy Sinatra boots. Walk all over his ass!

“For most of history, anonymous was a woman.”-Virginia Woolf

As a woman free from her chains, it’s partially my job to show other women their own… so they can recognize them as chains and break free. This isn’t a condemnation, it’s a truth telling. So share this with your black women and coy White women friends…

You get Justice, if you’re Lucky

Posted on by karyn lynn morton

Now if you listen closely
I’ll tell you what I know . -Maya Angelou, Alone

Life in 2020 is a constant cycle of trauma if you are Black in America. Black men face the constant pressure of being walking targets of brutality and fraudulent representations of waywardness. Black women treated as the weakest link when we literally anchor the totem in our dust. The last nine months have ushered in a physical and spiritual pandemic that has America in a chokehold and is both exhausting and overdue for Black folks. Protests, the exposure of racism and racists practices, and the real conversations on white privilege, supremacy, and responsibility are a true comeuppance. Yet simultaneously the constant broadcast of injustice, dead Black bodies, and loss of innocence are heartbreaking. My son’s drivers training class is having a discussion on “driving while Black”… a conversation whose necessity is obvious and life saving but also the face of racism and it’s affect on the Black cultural reality. The coming undone plays musically like the Janet Jackson sample…

Poetic Justice.

Black reality in this current space is like…
Pac and Janet.
Innocence and Pain.
Life and Death.
Trauma and Healing.
Cause and Effect.


Get your umbrella.

***

Read slow, and you’ll find gold mines in these lines. -Kendrick Lamar, Poetic Justice

Racism has always existed in the US, it is literally built upon it like bricks. It is the blood and bones of African slaves buried beneath Washington’s monuments. Yet 2020 has been a modern day Middle Passage, but cars instead of boats and prisons and cemeteries instead of plantations. State and government sanctioned murder and oppression of Black people, broadcast in living color. It reads like payback for our ascent that has challenged White men of what they thought was their birthright. A leader who with coded language and lies encourages the bad behavior of supremacy. Police officers who otherwise might have thought twice about shooting a Black man, woman, or child knows luck is on their side and justice will likely be suppressed. It seems, today is a good day when somebody got killed, instead of loved, in South Central LA.

The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan. –Maya Angelou, Alone

Blackness is a state of being and a state of mind. In America, our story is one of infinitesimal degrees of separation both physically and spiritually. Out of about 400,000 slaves shipped to North America through the slave trade, we now number over 42 million. We are connected very intimately to one another genetically. Brothers and sisters literally. Since our feet stepped on American soil we have lived with external oppression that has tricked some of us into internal betrayal, by breaking those bonds between us through separation, familial destruction, and mental torture.

There is, in every hood a series of dichotomous experiences. Pleasure and pain: we exude style, confidence, and creativity that is often forced to live in the shadows of violence and generational curses. A Pac and Janet, hood boy and good girl, love story set against a backdrop of hopeless and violence. The boys and girls in the hood suffer the trauma of racism and cultural confusion that affects both how we love and what we hate.

The reality of most urban communities is that Black and brown people have been pushed into these pockets by poverty, racist housing policies, and a lack of opportunity. But as communal people we make a family out of these circumstances the best we can. Play cousins; Aunties giving you dollars for As; your cousin braiding your hair in the porch steps; getting Grandma a new church crown; and doing the hustles at the family BBQ. Simultaneously battling internal struggles about who we are and our worth that have been handled down the emotional family tree like kinky hair and curves are handed down genetically. Black on Black crime is a fallacy; we are able and intelligent despite biased test scores; we are worthy despite the ruin we often live in and around m; and we are powerful despite the lack of our faces in public spaces. It’s not nature, but external cultural oppression that breeds internal cultural betrayal.

What we have in common is pain. -Kendrick

South Central, LA gang stories make sense, but love stories? Despite lives of hardship in a hard place, the characters played by Tupac Shakur and Janet Jackson were soft reminders of the beauty to be had by healing their deep pain and generational toxicity. Grief, death, fear, misogyny, distrust, selfishness colored their experiences, yet they were both representative of the very real innocence of love and connection. Violence and aggression are stories of necessity, like hip hop, they tell our story. Softness and love are our truth, like R&B, they make babies and families and communities. Lucky had a softness only hardened by reality, like Pillsbury and Doughboy were hardened by heat…choppas or circumstances. Be sure that hard shell you develop is only protective of your softness, and not preventing your brothers and sisters from reaching it.

As we protest that longstanding oppression ALONG with our own traumatic responses to watching our brothers and sisters killed in today’s streets, we find ourselves exhausted and in need of a reprieve. Karma will be our savior. Poetic Justice. The Buddhist theory of samsara teaches that after death, our spirits return to either the good realm or bad realm depending upon our actions during life. That realm is where we’ll exist until another death. Rebirth. As we heal and pay homage to our communal history and our generational truth, we are being reborn free. The oppressive shackles of racism only have wrists and ankles to bind that are afraid to break. Healing breaks you so you emerge whole. Trust, this entire year is one big therapy session. We gon be alright!

If I told you that a flower bloom in a dark room, would you trust it? -Kendrick

Ever wonder why we got all this rhythm? How we turn our blues into funk? Why we sing and cook and dance with soul… collard greens in our feet, baked mac and cheese bubbling over, and the sweet honey colored juice of yams coating our vocal chords so we can sing high line Minnie and deep like Mahalia. Why our hair winds, twists, turns up to the Heavens? Why we are painted in color? We are the sons and daughters of soul. The very place where love lives. The softest place on Earth.

And this is our exhausting reality. In one moment we mourn Breonna and the next celebrate Kamala. We are here to teach everyone else how to emerge from the ashes, whatever burned them. Only healed hearts can have that experience. You get Justice, if you are Lucky; if the stars align; if the color of your shirt is blue; or if you have dirt under your fingernails. But that doesn’t mean you ever stop fighting for her if you don’t get lucky. Despite what you’ve been told and no matter how many of your teeth they try to pull to force feed you racism, know that in reality they only want to slur your speech. We must speak, write, tweet, telegram, and Pony Express our experience, and let our collective, communal, and familial words holler out for justice and freedom, come hail, snow, sleet, or…

…there’s blood in my pen. –Kendrick Lamar

The Two Kamalas

Posted on by karyn lynn morton

On August 10th, 2020 reports came out that James “Kamala: The Ugandan Giant” Harris, the WWE wrestling star had died from COVID-19. When #RIPKamala trended on Twitter, people assumed the hashtag was in reference to Kamala Harris, the US Senator and potential running mate for Joe Biden. The very next day, Uncle Joe confirmed he had selected the Black female US Senator as his Vice-President nominee. Coincidences are just God reminding you, He created Dave Chappelle!

Both Kamalas have excelled at the top of their respective games. Yet both have been victims of America’s favor of white mediocrity over Black excellence.

James Harris was born to very meagar means, but through a series of encounters entered the wrestling world in Benton Harbor, Michigan under famous Black wrestler Bobo Brazil. He was brought into the WCW, in 1983, and at the behest of Jerry “The King” Lawler his character, Kamala The Ugandan Giant, a play off of Idi Amin and tribal Africans was born. The character played well in the racist South where wrestling was most popular, and where the mediocre dwell. As a result, Kamala grew in popularity, moving in to the bigger broadcast at WWE, and ongoing battles with superstars like Hulk Hogan, Jake “The Snake ” Roberts, Macho Man, and Andre “The Giant”… names you likely know whether you were ever into wrestling or not. Unlike many of the larger wrestlers, Harris was more agile and flexible, and could put on a show. He was actually athletic, and provided the movement and charisma in most of his matches against the superstar wrestlers. However well into his career, he was never paid as much as the White wrestlers, despite his popularity. Harris remembers being paid only $13,000 for a match The Undertaker was paid $500,000 for, well into his career. He was a wrestling great, who suffered from racism and the justification of it based on how profitable his character was to the company.

Kamala Harris is an alum of Howard University, graduate of the University of California-Hastings with a juris doctorate. She’s a lawyer, former district attorney of San Francisco, the Attorney General of the largest state of the union, a US Senator for ten years, and a former Democratic nominee for President. Yet, like the wrestler, she’s portrayed as an equally savage prison warden because of her work as a district attorney. Minutes after her announcement, Twitter erupted in misogynoir, talking about her inability to lead, her prosecutorial record as a DA, and spouting all the right wing media nonsense we have come to accept as gospel, instead of doing our own research. I don’t have time for a history lesson, but I can assure you of this…

Kamala Harris is an educated force of nature in an upcoming battle where she is the only warrior. Her running mate, although our best and only choice, is an old mediocre White man who America picked over excellent women and people of color, including Harris. Her opponents are two very mediocre White males, one a conservative talking head and the other, the spawn of evil who has locked up children in cages, allowed Black women to be abused and mistreated at his rally’s and applauded it, surrounded himself with a circus of wild and wacky Black people to prove he likes “the Blacks”, and told four Congresswomen of Black or Muslim heritage to go back where they came from, despite three of them being born US citizens and one of them being a naturalized citizen. In this ring, she is the only person who can go the full round without needing a medic and the only person who continues to prove she belongs in the upper ranks of government.

The biggest discussion during the Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates will be the handling of this pandemic by the Republican administration, and its failure to save American lives by issuing a national policy to curb the spread of COVID and race. As sad as James “Kamala” Harris’s death is, it’s fate that the next day a Black woman with the same name would be in the running to break the ceiling on another first for Black Americans. Black Lives truly do Matter. She has a unique opportunity to wipe the mat with Trump and Pence, to not only expose them for the racists and public health piranas that they are, but to soak up Kamala The Ugandan Giant’s blood, sweat, and tears in honor of every Black person who has persevered through racism to bust through those ceilings. Just when we begin to wonder if our living is in vain, the universe yells out to us, “No, of course not!”

Like Kamala the wrestler had to don a costume that certainly was offensive to Black people, he also had a job to do and a character to play in the wrestling production. Similarly, Kamala the district attorney had to abide by policies and laws made by the government of California that continued to put Black men in prison, she too had a job to do and a character to play in the government’s production. Neither entertainers or politicians are at liberty to make their own rules up, they have to follow the producer’s rules and the government’s laws… if they want the job. But they must get the job to reckon with and expose its evils. We expect Black politicians to represent Black people, when in fact, their jobs are to represent the people who elect them. Instead, we should expect all politicians to be excellent leaders dedicated to freedom for all people, and against marginalizing people to keep them from success and realizing their true potential. Black people have had to sacrifice to get success despite being excellent. It’s time for America to take on excellence as the standard and discard this notion that Black people have to be 10x better to get 10% of the spoils of white mediocrity. After all, you can’t be truly free and truly brave AND mediocre.

Now grab your war paint and get in your wide legged stance, because we need to go win this thing. Ya heard.

The Purple, People Eaters

Posted on by karyn lynn morton

I need a minute…just a minute of your time.

I am for and about the liberation of Black people from oppression. In order to understand that oppression, we have to call out discriminatory, racist, oppressive, supremacist, and privileged power systems that both created and continue to thwart that liberation.

Taking “whitening” off of toothpaste has NOT A THING to do with that. Nothing.

But if I have WATCHED, WITNESSED, and/or EXPERIENCED someone, maybe a group of someone’s taking advantage of what whiteness allows in America, and it negatively impacts and oppressed me, I have EVERY right to call it out. EVERY.

Picture it…

We live in the nation of Monsterica and in Monsterica, purple people are the most successful because they have a history of eating blue people, (who they forced to help them build the nation) whole or their parts, killing them off or handicapping them. It’s technically against the law now, but they still benefit from the headless, armless, legless blue folks whose families and communities suffered because of their handicap. Typically tall purple men were the ones that ate the blues, but over time short purple people ate a few blue people and used purple cannibalistic power over blue people to succeed like the talls. The blue people revolted. In calling out the tall purples they also called out the short purples. In short 🤣, if a short purple man feeds on me for his comeuppance in the way of the purple people, it’s not his height but his assimilation into purpledom that has put me in chains. Once I’m freed from those chains, expect me to admonish EVERY purple person, tall or short, who shackled me and my people. You decided to ignore your short teachings and take advantage of being purple. So sit in that purpleness… you earned it right!

“He was blowing it out, really knockin’ em dead; Playin’ rock and roll music through the horn in his head”-Sheb Wooley , The Purple People Eater

I get to call out my oppressors. I get to call them out by name. When I call out white supremacists, understand that’s not all White people but it includes any White person who wants my freedom stifled for his success. That’s tall, short, Christian, Protestant, rich, poor, blue eyed or green eyed. Everybody. Period. And like the talls, the shorts have a story, and in order to educate my people on our history of oppression, those stories need to be told. That’s education. It’s not hate speech if it’s truth speech. It’s hate speech to say Black people are inferior, less intelligent, over sexualized, thugs. It’s hate speech to say Jewish people are greedy, manipulative, crooked, and sneaky. It is not hate speech to say that a disproportionate number of Black people live in poverty or that a disproportionate number of Jewish people are media and entertainment executives, owners, and decision makers. It’s factual. It’s also not anti-Semitism… a phrase that is in and of itself ensconced in White privilege… to say that Black people have suffered at the hands of White people and Jewish business owners. It’s factual. Google it, or scroll down to yesterday’s blog. The education is there if you want it.

But this is also true… I can mistakenly and without malice say something in a generalized manner that is hurtful to a group of people, because it doesn’t apply to that entire group. If I say, “White people are racist”, that is wrong and I’d expect non-racist White people to expect me to retract and apologize because I was wrong. But if I say, “My experience has been that some White people are racist…” or “White supremacists are racist”, that is my truth and the truth, and I don’t have to and should never be asked to retract or apologize for truth. But if I’m wrong, and I apologize, that doesn’t mean I take back everything I said but it means I’m apologetic for condemning a group for the actions of the few and I’m sorry for hurting the people that don’t fall into that few. I’m not a sell-out, I’m an adult. And if I apologize for my bag, it’s my bag… how much is in yours!?

Guilty people don’t get to feign hurt and innocence when called out on their shit. Adults who hurt innocent people should apologize. We all need to show empathy and compassion. And oppressed people, in order to be liberated from it, MUST understand it and educate the masses about it, it’s how we pay for our freedom, cuz it ain’t free. The oppressors won’t like it tho… and when they can no longer eat you, they will just steal from you. Yep… take all yo shit!

“Never let the same dog bite you twice!”

-Chuck Berry

So don’t be afraid to call it a one eyed, one horned, purple, people eater… if that is WTF it is! Truth is like water, it takes the shape of whatever it enters, and surrounds and drowns whatever refuses it! The elected President, the state sanctioned police, their white supremacist electors and supporters, have caused what has amounted to an uprising in this country against racist and discriminatory acts, laws, policies, crimes, socially accepted images and institutions, and speech… written or spoken. It has focused on Black people who have been the victims of the most direct and continuous of these actions. But like thieves do, All Lives Matter is a tone deaf and privileged recharacterization of the real motives of Black Lives Matter (BLM). It’s a distraction to keep us oppressed. Black people don’t control any systems of power, so there is no racism inherent in BLM or any discussion of our liberation. The guilty will call it whatever they need in order to stifle it.

Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression.”

-Malcom X

The Black on Black Crime Fallacy

Posted on by karyn lynn morton

A few days ago I was totally impressed by the conversations and dialogue going on about Black life in America.

Today, in my mom’s group on Facebook (started by Raquelle Harris, a Detroit area journalist), we started talking about the fallacy of Black on Black crime that is used to both paint Black people as inherently violent by those who hunt and kill us and still used by Black people who are ignorant about crime statistics and buy into the Black people and neighborhoods as violent trope. As much as I’d like to take full responsibility for my writing, it is experiences such as these that give me something purposeful to share with you all. So let’s get to it…

So first let’s break this bullshit down to its shitty parts.

“IF Black lives really mattered…” Black lives do matter but we know who is responsible for this based on the mere fact that there is a question about a Black life having value. Someone Black invented that light you stop at while driving that warns you first that a stop is coming, to ensure you have time to stop, to save your life. His name was Garrett A. Morgan. Remember his life when your next drive ends with you walking through your front door. Someone Black invented that refrigerator truck that carries blood and organs for transplant that saved your Granpa Joe’s life. His name was Frederick McKinley Jones. Remember him when you need that pint. Someone Black was the first American soldier to die in a US war at the Boston Massacre in 1770 which led to the start of the American Revolution in 1775. He died helping to protect the throngs of White soldiers who regarded him as less than human. Remember him. We matter, there is no IFs about it.

“They’d stop shooting each other”… well we will stop when you stop. How about that! “Most states police forces kill Blacks at a higher rate per capita than Whites” and “in 2019, 24 percent of all police killings were of black Americans when just 13 percent of the U.S. population is black – an 11-point discrepancy. ” The fact that a person TASKED with the job of protecting and serving a community can kill an unarmed Black person 99% of the time with no repercussions is a much greater example of inhumanity than the reasons that are often present when citizens kill one another. Just yesterday I watched Watch Black Market with Michael K. Williams, there’s an episode about carjackings in Newark and these guys are basically saying… I had no food, no place to live, I can’t get hired, my children were hungry… I have to eat, so I don’t want to kill you but if you fight me I will because I’m hungry. Poverty and desperation tend to fuel neighbor v. neighbor killings. Narcissism, fear, power, and privilege tend to fuel unjustifiable police murders of people of color. Hunger and poverty induced madness is far different from state sanctioned killings and directly related to racist policies and actions that just fuel these fires.

“94% of all Blacks are shot by Blacks” … Murder or killing or shooting even is not a crime of race but one of proximity. Most US cities are segregated. After White flight, neighborhoods tend to be homogenous. Crime is typically committed by a perpetrator in the area where he/she lives. According to the FBI in 2013, of the 3,005 White people murdered, 2,509 were killed by White people. Similarly, if the 2,491 Black people killed, 2,245 were killed by other Black people. If we use these statistics, White on White crime happens more than Black on Black crime, so where’s the fake outrage? Stop it… stop promoting this garbage and stop repeating it. Black on Black crime as a justification or argument about Black people being killed, specifically by police, is a non-sequitur. Don’t do it.

We have to keep tearing down these false images. Sending Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben to the Sweet Home Plantation in the sky. Talking about discrepancies in pay versus levels of education between Whites and Blacks. Breaking down these facts and supporting them with data. Figuring out ways to talk to each other and then spreading the knowledge we gain is imperative. Not for them but for us. Black people aren’t responsible for teaching White people about the racism their ancestors created and they still benefit from. But we must educate ourselves so we don’t swallow their misinformation whole.

As for Blackness… there is no shortage of that. we are drippin melanin everywhere! We are the original man, the world is ours. We are where it all started.

Black life.
Black liberation.
Black intellect.
Black business.
Black lives.
Black votes.
Black love.
Black support.
Black men.
Black women.
Black children.
Black success.

And as for a Black on Black… that’s just how we like our couples and ours cars yo!

…all black. All chrome. Black-owned. Black tints. Matte black.

-Beyoncé, Black Parade

Black Maybachs, Black seats, White piping. Remind me of Paul McCartney and Mike fighting. The girl is mine. Life’s a bitch. So the whole world is mine!

-Jay -Z, Maybach Music

Find Raquelle Harris on Rocki’s Reality, her podcast and as a contributor to Rolling Out and This is R&B.

Micros in the Macro

Posted on by karyn lynn morton

Microagressions and macroagressions against Black people in this country are both symptoms of the same disease: racism.

Police brutality, unequal wages, the lack of justice for the murders of Black people at the hands of law enforcement, educational funding that is determined by property taxes, mass incarceration of Black people and unequal sentencing, housing disparities… those are the forms of racism we are used to hearing about. These government and legislative oriented issues that we know are major impediments to Black success, but things many of us see as factors we have little influence upon. These are macroaggressions… large scale injustices towards a group of maginalized people to further restrict their progress. These are the things we protest against and write books about.

But it’s those smaller, more prevalent, daily and incessant indignities that communicate hostile, discriminatory, and prejudicial slights against us that really eat away at our peace, emotional stability, faith, self-worth, and truths. Microaggressions are those things that happen across our intersections… sex, race, sexual orientation, religion, class, educational level… to weaken us in our social spaces. They are often harder to identify and certainly harder to prove. But they are nonetheless the most fucking exhausting form of racism.

We are in the midst of some sort of paradigm shift. Our kids care not about Black, White, gay, straight, rich, or poor. Hip hop concerts are filled to the brim with White kids who know every word of Kendrick’s “D.A.M.N.”. Black boys blasting Jack Harlow, a white boy rapper who looks like an extra from Dawson’s Creek. Black girls rocking creepers and Hispanic girls rocking baggy jeans and crop tops in reverence to Aaliyah. They march together for Black Lives Matter. The protests boasting as many White faces as Black ones. A majority of people in America recognize and speak out and about white privilege and it’s affects in the lives on non-White Americans. Yet, the shift hasn’t quite happened yet. And the shift is in the macro.

Ask any Black woman about microaggressions. It’s in the comments, the slights, the looks, the 911 calls trying to report Black people for being, impeding people of color in social spaces, and the social media comments that don’t exactly promote racism but somehow justify behaviors that slap the hands of Black people for touching the glass objects, their fragile ass egos. It’s at work when the White supervisor accuses you of something with no proof, at the store when she clutches her purse, at the restaurant when she asks to speak to your manager because you gave her three and not four ice cubes. It’s a use of power, white privilege, to demote you to a place lower than where you started. It’s racism. It’s bullshit.

The same way we do blackouts, shout and share on social media, protest and engage, and mass call and demand for arrests for the murderers of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor… we have to expose this shit in the same way. Don’t just videotape and share Black deaths. Videotape and share White ignorance… show and tell that fool calling the police on a man minding his business at the park or at his house. Then let’s go en masse to the police station with their names and addresses to demand their arrests for filing fake police reports. Let’s call out folks at work and file mass EEOC and Title VII complaints. If she stands behind your car to impede your movement, call the police, lay on your horn, videotape her and post it everywhere. Yell out loud… I’m being harassed and stalked!!!!

In 1988 Donald Trump put an ad in the New York Times demanding that New York bring back the death penalty, particularly in the case against the Central Park Five, Black males all of whom have been exonerated of their wrongful convictions of the rape of a White woman in the park. The racists use their money and access to continuously attempt to dismantle our communities, success, families, and businesses. We have to employ the methods available to us to fight hatred and fear. We also have to expose all forms of racism.. but especially those that eat away at our individual and collective psyche.

Microaggressions are used to weaken us so we submit to macroaggressions… too exhausted to fight or fight back. Imagine how many time Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown had heard themselves, their friends, or other young brothas called thugs, uneducated, stupid, violent, or worthless. How many times had Sandra Bland and Korryn Gaines heard they were bitter, angry, less refined than their white counterparts, needed to straighten their hair, lose their hips, or calm down their attitude. How many times have you been told you are LUCKY to have your job, you can easily be replaced, you are too sensitive or angry, everything isn’t about race, you have the chance, opportunity, ability to come so much farther than your ancestors… as if it’s a gift, as if our ancestors were ALL born into slavery, as if we voted George Washington and his 123 slaves having ass into office.

NOPE!

These microaggressions are not just being mean, being an asshole, ignorance, fear, because leadership positions are hard, because you reacted wrong, or because it’s your job to educate or change the minds of the ignorant.

It’s RACISM! These actions are a systematic part of the same systems that are written into our governments and made legal by our lack of legislation.

Period.

Call a thing a thing.

Call it what it is OUT LOUD!

Signed, a Negro with Attitude

I-De-Clare…

Posted on by karyn lynn morton

“When the looting starts the shooting starts”

Donald J. Trump

THIS is America.

These racially diverse people burnt commercial Minneapolis to the ground in the exact same manner that George Floyd lost his life on the ground.

THIS is a revolution.

Racism is a tool of power. It is a direct action supported by the system in power to oppress a certain race of people from forward progress and opportunity. It was used to colonize every part of the world inhabited by people of color to raze the land, steal its resources, and torture and traumatize its people into burying their past to survive their present. Mentally and emotionally scarred people can only grow and rebuild with time and healing… not when that torture and trauma is constantly relived. We begin to believe we must adhere to the values of the culture we’ve had forced upon us and are virtually ignorant of the one our ancestors, the first people, the creators of civilization, were born into. We have exhausted trying to live an American Dream not meant for us. It’s time we gain knowledge of self, for when we know who we are and where we come from, we know our destination, our next move.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

1. Knowledge of Self

We are the original people. Aristotle, Thales, and the great Greek and Roman philosophers learned at the feet of Egyptian and Ethiopian scholars. At the Temple of Waset in Kemet, Greeks and Romans alike were taught mathematics, science, the building blocks of language, art, medIcine, and free intellectual thought. That’s our truth. Africans were/are communal and tribal, we lost that in favor of American individualism. That’s theirs, not ours. Africans were/are creators not destroyers. That’s theirs, not ours. Africans are/were both intellectually sound and in tune with nature not overly dependent on technology. That’s theirs, not ours. We are leaders not just followers trying to catch up to White success. As such, Black people must unlearn and relearn who we are. To gain power WE MUST believe we are powerful.

“In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity”

Sun Tzu

2. Educate

We take that newfound power to build by organizing… first educating ourselves in every trade, legal, medical, and financial arena. We must also educate our children and anyone who wants to know about our history, real American history, and world history. One cannot effectuate change by wishing and hoping other people act or don’t… we change ourselves. We pivot until we get our shot. Then we shoot… not with bullets but with truth. You don’t just speak truth you act in truth. You show your enemy (yes racists and White supremacist and NOT White people are our enemy) who TF you are. Racism is built on lies that paint us as less intelligent and civilized. We don’t have to prove that to be untrue… it is untrue. What we do need is a multi level approach to ensuring our unalienable rights are upheld. We aren’t guests in America, we are the architects. But no one will listen to your truth unless you grab the mic. We must react with our forward movement. But be a ninja about it…

“The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent.”

Sun Tzu

3. Organize

I have watched these chaotic protests in many cities that are infiltrated by those who in turn incite more violence and hide in plain sight. Protests since the Tulsa Riots have resulted from police brutality and resulted in razing communities. We can’t show up with choppas at the legislature, we’ll be shot on sight. So we destroy the things built in our communities, often not owned by us, because of proximity and out of anger. Going forward, we must be organized, prepared, smart, resourceful, and stealth at all times. If you ever see me at a protest we all coming in all Black, faces cover, basically unidentifiable. We got rags dipped in milk or vinegar, two fully charged cell phones each, important phone numbers written on our arms (lawyer, ACLU, mom, hubby, friends, the person with bond money), several of the same sign, water, a planned route, scarves for anyone who shows up unexpected, and a promise of peace for the safety of all involved.

“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

In addition to our preparation on the ground level our preparation beyond the classroom needs to be as stealthy and as smart. Buying stock in the American businesses we have helped build; starting our own businesses; supporting making those businesses quickly profitable; creating communities that are self-sustainable with schools, farms, medical facilities, retail, and opportunities for ownership; using our resources to grow and build not to accumulate; voting systematically (votequadrant.com); running for office in every state, every elected position, en masse; using our money to support Black candidates with an agenda to pass and support legislation that tears down the system that supports racism, law by law. Ensuring “we the people” are all considered and treated like human beings.

Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.

-Sun Tzu

The time has come for Black people in America to declare war on Racism and White Supremacy. There is an art to this. We are by far the more creative. On every level we need to come correct. Racism is the biggest racket going. The biggest Ponzi scheme ever. We created real hustling. It’s time to put that skill to good use. Our children’s children need not be born victims.

“I hustle for my last name, not my first.”

-Damon Dash

THIS is a solution.

Dedicated to every unarmed Black person who has been shot and killed in the name of justice, unjustifiably, whose murderers walk the Earth freely today. This is for Trayvon, Mike (Brown), Philando, Eric,Breonna, Botham, Sean (Reed), Sean (Bell), Oscar (Grant), Sandra (Bland), Alton, Ronald, Kendra, Jordan, Amadou, Atatiana, Korryn, Ahmaud, George, and every other Black person who lost their life at the hands of a coward.