I really don’t know how to feel right now bruh, so I figured I’d hit the blog and do what I do best… Vent.
I guess I should start by saying it’s a shame that the title of this piece has now become a fucking cliché…
How many more bruh?
How many more hours of unfiltered extrajudicial killings must we sit through before some of ya’ll wake the fuck up and realize there’s a problem at hand?
How many more RIP hashtags will it take for some of ya’ll mfs to realize this country doesn’t care for Black lives? Nor has it ever cared for Black lives to be honest…
How many more Trayvon Martins, Tamar Rices, Sandra Bland, George Floyds, Breonna Taylors, Trayford Pellerin, and so many more, must it take before mfs realize why we shout BLACK LIVES MATTER?
A lot of ya’ll probably never heard of Trayford Pellerin which speaks to how fucked up this system truly is. These killings happen so regularly, that a man being gunned down by police (11 shots) doesn’t even cross your radar. Below are links to what happened to our brother Trayford Pellerin. Please do what you can to help spread awareness about this murder so that justice can be served and the family can receive the closer it deserves:
- ‘He had a big heart’: Family mourns Trayford Pellerin after fatal Louisiana police shooting
- Protest, fires erupt after police-involved shooting of Black Louisiana man Trayford Pellerin
- Louisiana officials are investigating the police shooting of a 31-year-old Black man
- (GoFundMe) JUSTICE FOR TRAYFORD PELLERIN
How many more days is it going to take before we finally receive the justice and equality we’ve been asking for for far too long?
How many more “conversations” about race and the violence associated with whiteness must we have before some of ya’ll mfs realize that your privilege comes at the expense of Black people and other POC?
I’m asking because I honestly have no clue. I have no idea what it will take to break through the hubris ignorance and the centuries of propaganda that has plagued this country ever since it’s conception. But what I do know is, we’re fucking tired of being tired bruh.
This week has been tough for me to say the very least. It’s rare that I wake up tired as hell, but that’s been the case EVERY SINGLE FUCKING DAY THIS WEEK. It’s not just physical exhaustion either. I’ve been mentally drained these pass couple of days more than I’ve ever been for much of the new decade. It’s honestly tough to really describe the feeling in words, but if I were to try I’d say it’s a feeling of hopelessness.
Hopelessness
The hopelessness I’ve been feeling is something Baldwin once spoke about over 50 years ago…
“By the time you are thirty, you have been through a certain kind of mill. And the most serious effect of the mill you’ve been through is, again, not the catalog of disaster, the policemen, the taxi drivers, the waiters, the landlady, the landlord, the banks, the insurance companies, the millions of details, twenty four hours of every day, which spell out to you that you are a worthless human being. It is not that. It’s by that time that you’ve begun to see it happening, in your daughter or your son, or your niece or your nephew. You are thirty by now and nothing you have done has helped to escape the trap. But what is worse than that, is that nothing you have done, and as far as you can tell, nothing you can do, will save your son or your daughter from meeting the same disaster and not impossibly coming to the same end.”
James Baldwin (Pin Drop Speech)
Dealing with the realities of white supremacy is what fuels my hopelessness. The closer I inch towards 30 (29 right now) the more I begin to realize that regardless of how loud I shout, how much content I put out, or the hundreds of constructive conversations I might have with open-minded individuals, everything falls short of the main goal… It’s realizing that there is nothing I can personally do to end the system that unjustly took so many of my brothers and sisters away.
Also, don’t confuse my hopelessness with defeat either. Defeat means the end, whereas hopelessness (in the right mindset) means new beginnings. For much of this week I wasn’t in the right mindset… I was letting the stress of my hopelessness distract me from my true main goal in this fight.
All that shit ends today bruh.
speak it into existence
Today is the start of new beginnings. Today is the day I release the stress tied to my hopelessness, and refocus that energy to accomplish my true main goal. That goal being the freeing of my mind, as well as the minds of my fellow brothers and sisters.
Gil Scott-Heron once said that, “the revolution will not be televised.” A lot of people oftentimes mistake that to mean that the media won’t cover the real revolution. What Gil was actually saying is that the revolution won’t be televised because the real revolution happens within your own mind. You can’t free shit, until you first free your mind. Once I’ve fully dismantled the racism I’ve internalized, I can then focus on picking the mental locks that enchain the minds of my fellow brothers and sisters.
Moving forward expect to see more content focused on just that. Until then, àṣẹ.
The Ghetto Activist 