Know Your Whites: Welcome to Charlottesville USA

How’s everyone feeling out there?

I’m sure you’re all drained and wish you could stop looking at your social media pages but it’s like a bad movie you can’t stop watching.  

And after #45’s melt down at his press conference yesterday, I’m sure you’re wondering what’s next?

Like all of you, I’ve watched the violence and the hatred initiated by White folks with first world problems over the weekend in Charlottesville and I thank Humble Vito who went in on Monday with his post, Trump’s America and asked maaaaaaaad questions but I got more to add to his righteous rant as this is Black August, which is all about Black Righteous rage.

•      First off, White Supremacists be marching right after golf practice now?
•      Oh shit, have hoods been discontinued or have racists just gotten that bold?
•      What are you marching for again?
•      Do people think any bit of this started out peaceful?

As I watched these White folks pretending to be disenfranchised, my initial reaction was flavored with a bit of humor. But, then a car plowed into a crowd of anti-White Supremacists, I saw photos of a group of White terrorists beat a Black man bloody and my humor quickly transformed to anger and rage.

I was practicing my alibi just in case I put hands on a random White person. I started ranting on Facebook and posting on a 2% battery. Needless to say, I was really pissed.

But notice I didn’t say shocked. Very few things shock Black people when it comes to White folks. Every time someone thinks White people can’t get any more racist, evil or petty, Black people say “ Don’t believe’em just watch.”

There’s a saying that Black people “know their Whites”, which means Black people can anticipate White folks’ every move and we understand White folks’ double-speak.

• White folks say things like, “We’re going to do an investigation of the police officer who shot and killed (insert Black person’s name) which Black people know this to mean: said police officer will get a desk job, stay getting paid, found innocent and nowadays they will get a new job. And the State sanctioned killing of Black people continues. 

I like to think of myself as a White weather forecaster: This weekend in Charlottesville it was 80 degrees and humid, the perfect weather for violence, bigotry and White supremacy. and White tears.

For all of you Game of Thrones watchers, this may be the first time you’ve heard of White walkers but Black people have known them for generations and unfortunately we can’t build a wall to keep them the fuck away from us.

I don’t know what was worse, the White Supremacists marching for White power or the White response to those White Supremacists.

Knowing your Whites

Y’alls sorry excuse for a President, AKA The Bully of the Free World, AKA All-of-a-sudden Silent Twitter Fingers. He is what I would call “the sunny and clear skies racist but the oh shit I forgot my umbrella racist.”

He can think clearly when he’s the one giving the racist rants but when the racism takes on its own weather pattern, he can’t handle it. Here’s an excerpt from the wack ass statement he made about the events.

“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides. On many sides. It’s been going on for a long time in our country. Not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama. This has been going on for a long, long time.”

REEEWWIIIIIINNNDDDD!

Say that again!

Violence on many sides?

I must’ve missed the hexagon floating across the television ’cause there was only one side that I saw and it was the side of the hateful and violent White folks marching.

I honestly feel like he should’ve said that first sentence in front of a mirror instead of cameras. When he got sworn in, he needed to say, “I, Donald Hatred, Bigotry, Violence Trump swear never to speak of Obama again in life. THE END!”

I’m absolutely disappointed in Trump but not for the reason y’all might think. How is it that you ran an entire campaign on hate and won based on hate and now you won’t own your hating ass followers?

You better claim your tribe. And now after his 3rd statement on Charlottesville and his melt down press conference. He has finally claimed his tribe.

He has called the Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, and Alt-right, his Brethren, his golf buddies and his new advisors.

David Duke was correct. Those White folks put him in office and he needs to own every bit of that hate.

You know what I hate worse than a bully? A bully who backs down. He did it for a minute but after last night, he stood up in all his racist bully glory.

And speaking of bullies.

Peter Cvjetanovic

He was one of the tiki torchers and when his picture went viral, his bitch ass said the following:

“I did not expect the photo to be shared as much as it was,” Cvjetanovic said. “I understand the photo has a very negative connotation. But I hope that the people sharing the photo are willing to listen that I’m not the angry racist they see in that photo.”

This is called an oncoming bullshit storm.

Where do I begin with this microwave White Supremacist? Add bitch and stir. So you wanted to protest and be violent but you didn’t want anyone to see or share it? And unlike your smarter forefathers who wore hoods to hide their faces, you were on some #maskoff shit.

Ok, interesting. 

Now you want people to listen to you explain about how you’re not racist. But, I’m sure if I tried to listen to you, all I would’ve heard was you screaming, “Nigger, Fags, Jews” in my face. 

Who are you trying to convince that you’re not an angry racist even though all of the evidence points to the contrary? I never knew a person could transform in less than 48 hours.

You sir, are a miracle and what I call, a mask off, mask on White.

Next on the list … Governor Terry McAuliffe

He’s the White person in the forecast who you thought was gonna be 90 degrees and on the day of, you find out the temperature dropped 20. In other words, the perfect weather to pretend to be angry while still letting other White folks off the hook.

“Our message is clear. Go home. You are not wanted in this great commonwealth. Shame on you. You pretend that you’re patriots but you’re anything but patriots…Let me give you some advice. Use your time and energy to help people.”

This pissed me off because people kept re-tweeting and re-posting and praising the Governor because on the surface, it sounded good to them. This shit sounded like a disappointed father telling his child he wasn’t supposed to eat cookies before dinner.

He told the White Supremacists to go home.

Wait, that’s it?

Nah, you gon’ have to do better than that, homie.

Again, these are the slap on the wrist consequences that White people are afforded. He basically said you can terrorize people in Nevada, Nebraska and wherever the hell else, just don’t have me looking like a shitty governor in these streets. I just can’t with this weak ass speech. Then he gave them advice; advice that they were already following…they are using their time and energy to help their people.

What don’t you get?

You should’ve warned them that their asses were going to be hunted down and taken to jail but that sounds too much like right, too much like justice so we’re just gonna skip the accountability segment of this speech.

He had the nerve later on in his speech to recognize the “real” patriots such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. You mean the same Thomas Jefferson who owned hundreds of Black people and raped and impregnated 14 year old Sally Hemmings? Jefferson is morally one step above Trump.

He’s not my type of patriot. A patriot is a person who vigorously supports their country and is prepared to defend it against enemies or detractors. I’m thinking Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr. and  Colin Kaepernick. I guess Jefferson was the best the Governor could do but that was a reference Black people could’ve done without.

Again, crackers are clever because it’s more about what they don’t say than what they do say.

Speaking of what wasn’t said…

I’m gonna give a shout out to White folks at work

These are Winter Weather Advisory Whites- You stock up and stay home thinking, when these White allies go off, White Supremacists are gonna run inside and lock their doors. Instead, you wake up to find out the storm didn’t hit and you could’ve gone outside your damn self. These are the self-righteous Whites who pound their fists on the nearest table, yelling about injustice until it’s really time to do something.

I walked into work Monday morning and the silence was on 10. All I heard was fingers hitting keyboards and coffee cups scraping the desks. You would’ve thought Charlottesville was an underrated Netflix movie that no one watched. I had all of these feelings and no one to voice it to. But one of my Black colleagues breached the topic with me and we had an hour-long discussion about the very things I’ve been speaking about throughout this post.

–       How am I supposed to do my work when there are hate groups openly targeting Black, Brown, LGBTQ people, Muslims, many of the people I know and love, without punishment?

–       How is it that the same people who were crying a river the day after the election, skipped to work Monday morning?

–       Why aren’t we creating the space to discuss these incidents? Silence is the reason we keep going in circles. Silence is violence. And White Silence is the death penalty.

One thing I can say is that I’m always glad to know who the racists are-it decreases some of my paranoia.

Calling me a Nigger to my face works a whole lot better for me than my supposed White ally referring me to as her “ghetto friend” behind my back or being told that my hair seems like a problem or any of the other covert racist silence I have to endure.

Either way, I think I’ve proven that I know my Whites but what I don’t know is, what is our plan to deal with them?

Educators, educators, educators

We already gave you the format for approaching times like this: The CREAD Resources for the Day after the Election: The Very Black Edition. We need to rename it, The CREAD Education for Liberation instructional manual for every time White people act like White people or something like that….we’re still working on the name.

–       Don’t start off the school year asking students about their summer without addressing this issue. Your students saw the same things that you saw on social media and television. I know my 17-year-old did. How do we breach this conversation?  Let kids get in their feelings. We need to stop rationalizing everything and understand that people are scared, hurt and pissed. Those White Folks are clearly pissed (for what? Again, the verdict is still out on that one.) Acknowledge and deal with the trauma of living while Black in America.

–       Discuss the ways in which White supremacy has not benefitted White people either. Yes, they have power but the interesting thing about power is that you always have to protect it (or so you think) so that leads to paranoia and fear and violence, all of the things we’re seeing in these spoiled, mediocre White men.

–       Compare the treatment of White Nationalists and the KKK to the treatment of Black Lives Matter and the Black Panthers. Hint: The government seeks to destroy the latter. Speaking about the Black Panthers you, know Decolonizing Education Publishing is dropping a Black Panthers Children’s book in the fall.

We here at CREAD have already given you a the “We gon be alright” framework.

We need to continue to nourish our minds and keep our weapons loaded cause there are more Charlottesvilles on the way.

Winter is coming.

Rise.
Read.
Resist.
Repeat.