Thank you for this meaningful comment and for reading what I have written.
Yet, I do not know how many of my essays you have read. When I was writing this, I did notice my language toward these monsters was excessive. However, it pales in what they did to Zooey and what they would have done to my parents, who are 85 and 86. If you are familiar with my work, you have read how my mother had been thrust from a segregated one-room school for all of the black children K-12 into an integrated school. Her parents had gained the highest level of education for their family in their history, both completing the 3rd grade.
She showed up to the first day of high school not knowing what a noun or a verb was. Did that happen to your parents? Why?
The venom in my words, is caustic, and I freely understand and accept the damage my soul is being subjected to when I unleash my scorn about these cowards.
I am not denying that one could, in good faith, credibly interpret how I depict these women as misogyny. I will even go a step further; some of the language I intentionally use in this piece and many others I employ the tactics used against my people: dehumanization.
I use words like venom, hissing, barking, bellowing, crowing, and other words associated with beasts to describe the conduct of virulent transphobes, racists, homophobes, misogynists, and antisemites.
I respect and admire that you are the first person to comment on my language.
I also finished this essay powerfully condemning these white women’s white husbands, who are the ones who actually hold and wield the power. I believe I held my most terse condemnation for these cowards. In my opinion, the language I employed to repudiate them was harsher…since they are ultimately responsible. However, we can agree to disagree.
On the issue of Ye. You might not have caught my Eulogy for Ye. I will link that and other articles below if case you are interested to see how I feel about him.
If you have read many of my essays you will know that I draw on the the Holocaust often. How the Nazis modeled their actions on how white Americans treated black people. Jim Crow was the blueprint for the ghettos. They even found the one-drop rule too extreme and limited it to you were Jewish if you were 1/16th.
You know that I have found Dakau the worst place I have ever been in my life and that my time on the unholy land has stained my soul. It was there when I saw the homes in close proximity to this death and misery factory that I concluded this is what happens when good people do nothing. People on one side of the fence were living their mundane lives and on the other side of the fence, people were being slaughtered just because they existed.
With Ye, I did not use his verse I used Rick Ross’s. I wrote an essay that only like eight people ever viewed to explain why I am using rap songs and lyrics to title my articles. I recognized that using any song from Ye’s discography was a controversial act, but then again in my Eulogy to him, I explain myself.
I am curious about a couple of things that me and other black writers on this platform have mentioned before. Most people were fine when he said that slavery was a choice. People were fine when he donned the white lives matter shirt. Some even continued to ride with him when he told lies about George Floyd. It wasn’t until he said equally disgusting things about the Nazis and praised Hitler that people had a problem…why?
I would submit that suggesting that slavery was a choice is one of the most offensive things that one could utter in this world. Yet, I would argue because it was about black people, most non-black people paid him no mind. If we are going to not tolerate that which is intolerable, then we must call it out at all points, even when it does not touch our own skin.
I see your criticism and I recognize the validity of it, but ultimately I reject it.
Now allow me to ask you a question or two. White people have constantly scolded nonwhite people for the manner they confront oppression. They try to police our emotions, our tone, how we oppose our oppressors when we confront intolerance, and why we do it. We are often cautioned to wait for a better time or say things in a softer more palatable way. We are told to wait.
Your comment reminded me of this passage in MLK’s Letter From A Birmingham Jail.
But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society;…when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger” and your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodyness” — then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.
I ask again why did you feel that you needed to police my tone? Did you think that I, a fellow member of the bar, was ignorant in the words I choose to share? What about me inspired you to write such a seemingly well-reasoned response?
Here is an article I wrote about comparing various KLs to the current situation in prisons in rural America. https://medium.com/afrosapiophile/the-tower-prisons-in-rural-america-are-the-bribe-for-hiding-the-horrors-committed-within-c82078362f96
Here is an essay about Jerry Jones. You can see how I talk about evil white men. https://medium.com/afrosapiophile/if-i-ruled-the-world-jerry-jones-would-be-a-felon-c9e2686ccf20
My piece about Ye. I was done with him before he bellowed out his disgusting lies about Nazis and Hitler…like many black people. From your statement about Ye it seems that you were only done with him after he engaged in antisemitism, but not before…why?
https://medium.com/afrosapiophile/it-all-falls-down-a-eulogy-for-kanye-west-ba1d34087eb0
In Community,
GAME
