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What have we learned?

In early June of 2020, three months into the pandemic and just days after George Floyd was murdered before our eyes, I shared this very raw and emotional outburst on social media. In the coming days/weeks, I will share the work I have done over the past year to be the change that I wanted to see, both in myself and in the lives of those around me. I hope you will come along with me on this journey on the first of many topics and I pray that it inspires you to challenge yourself in ways that are thought provoking and life changing.

What if...


What if the destruction that you are witnessing in the streets are an opposite and equal visual representation of the destruction of the countless souls impacted by the deeply rooted spirits of hatred, bigotry and oppression? This IS the reality that has hindered and, in some cases, ruined the lives, hopes and dreams of black and brown people in this country still today.


If that were true, would you do anything differently?


This isn’t just about justice for George Floyd or any of the lives taken recently that were caught on video but still received no convictions. For every act of violence and death that you have seen or read about and chose to ignore or justify, there are thousands, maybe millions more that you did not see, mourn over or add a hashtag for justice to be served. We (black people) see it on a regular basis, but we keep the conversations amongst ourselves because you don’t want to hear it. Likely, because if you did, that would mean someone would have to take responsibility for changing it. So, to preserve your comfort level, our brains have become programmed to endure trauma, just SUCK UP AND DEAL and put on a happy face!


Well, how’s that working for you now that it is affecting the economy, the flow of traffic and interrupting your social media feeds? Even though the vandalism and many of these fires are proving to have been planted and started by extreme racist groups, including cops in disguise to reinforce the narrative and bait the Civil War that white supremacists have been waiting for, THIS BLACK WOMAN IS TIRED of sucking it up and dealing for the sake of your comfort.


This system is BROKEN, it’s always been broken, and you can’t heal what you don’t allow yourself to acknowledge and feel!


God is doing open heart surgery on all of us, and these are the shattered bones, bloody guts and failing organs of 400 years of justified demonic oppression over the human lives and spirits CREATED BY THE SAME GOD THAT CREATED YOU!


Does my life, my story, my pain matter enough to you now? Will you care more about restoring what’s broken in our hearts more than what’s broken in a store window? Do the lives and safety of my sons matter more than how the status quo benefits your stock portfolio? Although inconvenient, things can be replaced by insurance, but not the lost lives that we’ve become accustomed to dismissing with “thoughts and prayers”.


Would you be willing to give up your guns if it would save the life of another black man at the hands of racism? "But I felt threatened! I need to defend myself and my family!" That excuse only works for you, but not me. That’s the buzz phrase, go to excuse because that’s what has always been acceptable for you.


Why do you feed a white mass murderer a bottle of water like he's a baby, drive him through a Burger King for a bite to eat on the way to the precinct and think, “poor guy... he must be mentally ill to do something like that”? “Pray for him, he needs help,” you’d say, BUT you'll shoot at first sight and then dig for a criminal record for any excuse to justify why it’s okay to say they must have had a good reason, when he/she looks like me?


Everyone says don’t make it political, but IT IS a political issue, a spiritual issue and a human rights issue, so intricately intertwined that it’s impossible to separate.


How do we stand on the Word of God to protest the deaths of the unborn, yet are comfortable justifying the right to keep guns, JUST IN CASE you feel threatened enough to take someone else’s life to protect your own? I know how, by the abuse of the word “innocent”. Do you pray for those lost lives or do you post a prayer emoji, while passing judgement and attack their character to make yourselves appear innocent?


What if we spent more of our resources investing in ministering to brokenhearted women, faced with that difficult decision for reasons unknown, so they’ll choose life at the heart level and not make it a political issue? How many of you are willing to adopt that baby if it doesn’t have blonde hair and blue eyes, that fit in perfectly in your family portrait? I’ve witnessed families travel to several other countries shopping for babies through adoption boutiques but won’t adopt the black and brown children right here that need homes. Those kids growing up in “the system” are the first ones you'll judge and devalue because they are a drain on the economy.


I often hear, “even if the gun laws changed the bad guys are going to find a way to get them anyway, SO I’M KEEPING MY GUN”. Fine, then shouldn’t that same rule apply to hospitals and clinics that perform abortions safely? The bottom line is there is a different set of moral standards and priorities between the two debates that divides us far more than by racial lines.


So, when someone asks me, “how can you say you love Jesus and vote for someone who doesn’t oppose abortion rights”? I respond with, “because of my faith I won’t get one, however I cannot ignore, or support the continuation of the known systems of oppression, including gun laws that continue to kill people that look like me, and knowingly stack the cards against me EVERYDAY”. Further, I am sick and tired of being guilt tripped into choosing to ban abortion rights and defend your rights to tote your guns and sport your confederate flags proudly, over my right to exist and feel safe and thrive so you can decide whether I am a GOOD ENOUGH CHRISTIAN!


To avoid being labeled an angry black woman means having to keep my mouth shut, put on a happy face and keep playing the game that I know I can’t win because my family’s livelihood depends on not ruffling any feathers. Is that fair?


What if this is THE PERFECT STORM?


What if a black man had to be elected as the president of the United States so that racism would come out of the closet and rear its ugly head? What if the man that succeeded him had to be elected so the boldness of that demonic existence would have permission to rise up and show itself loud and proud so EVERYONE who is not black or brown finally sees things for what they are? I have been watching you bury your head in the sand, make excuses and say pray for our president and judge not lest ye be judged every time he says something that fuels the flames of hatred and division, but when it was the black guy, evil overtook the land through a fake birth certificate with a wife, whom you literally compared to an ape, as you celebrated when a dummy was paraded in the streets with his neck in a noose. Is that the same level of respect you want me to uphold?


As tragic and scary and painful as it’s been... what if COVID-19 had to happen right now for people to be forced to stay stuck in their homes and wear masks that restrict their ability to breathe comfortably and speak freely for the purpose of getting a tiny glimpse of what it feels like to be black in America? How would it feel holding your breath for a lifetime in fear every day, not knowing if it’s the day the invisible monster of racism will strike AGAIN and finally be the time that means life or death for you or someone you love, just like the invisible monster of COVID-19? You can choose to take your mask off! We can’t remove what too often feels like the suffocating existence of our blackness.


I am blessed that I can work from home and maintain our needs without financial disruption, but yet and still, it’s my family and close friends that are dying at a disproportional rate from COVID because we work the jobs that you all don’t want to have to do. We work the jobs that pay less and don’t have telework options, knowing that if we don’t work our children don’t eat! It literally feels like we are living THE PURGE!


We’ve applied for the same PPP Loan to save our small businesses, but YOU WILL GET IT BEFORE ME because of the quietly executed racial profiling that occurs in banks every freaking day. It’s just hidden in fine print and loopholes that only the privileged have access to influence. It’s okay! There’s nothing left anyway because the banks profited more from distributing the money to multimillion-dollar companies that don’t need it, robbing those who literally need it to survive. Is that not a more sophisticated form of looting?


Many of you HAVE experienced poverty or hardship enough to understand that grind, but you still are given the benefit of the doubt in your workplaces and everywhere you go when you are having less than a cheerful day! Your acts of anger are justified but mine are not. You will still be paid more for that same job than me, or people that look like me. Yet you can still part your lips to say, “It’s your imagination. That’s in the past, why can’t you get over it already?” We get the good ole “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” speech because that’s what makes America Great.


Please tell me when exactly was AMERICA so great that we need to fight, steal, and kill our brother or sister to GET BACK TO THIS PROSPEROUS AND EUPHORIC TIME IN AMERICAN HISTORY? Is it the part that we were hanging from trees in nooses? Is it the part that we were hunted by dogs and mutilated for trying to flee enslavement? Maybe it was when we were beaten for drinking from your water fountain or having the nerve to sit in the front of the bus? Maybe it’s the stench of the burnt grass from the crosses that were burned in our ancestor’s yards in my mother’s lifetime, right here in Virginia? Or possibly the adrenaline rush generated from dodging the bullets that were shot through the windows of my mother’s childhood home because they had no right to own real estate in YOUR part of town? Perhaps it’s the part where the wide variety of our complexions in our family line reminds us daily (to the point that we fight and discriminate amongst ourselves) that it was our slave master that raped our great-great grandmother, fathering the children that created that LIGHT SKINNED AND PRETTY HAIR GENE?


In my family, his name is WILLIAM PRESGRAVES and his buried in Middleburg, VA just 30 miles from my home. That’s the root of the legacy that started the curse of sexual abuse in my family, of which the impacts of 16 years of my own abuse ruined my ability to have a healthy marriage and a happy family! That’s the root of what makes me fight for my sanity and my worthiness EVERYDAY of my life. It’s ironic that people hear my story and judge the people who abused me, without understanding how that seed was planted in them in the first place.


Does that part matter? That’s the part that your silence impacts as you continue to judge blackness as a whole, when our legacy is quietly, yet not so quietly displayed through the dysfunction that we inherited, as you so casually call us thugs and bitches!


How are black men supposed to learn to be loving, strong and dependable in our families when they were ripped away from us to make you more money? When violence is the only language we know how to speak because you beat the shit out of us if we stepped out of line or forgot to say, “Yes sir Massa”? When we were inbred because it was cheaper to make us procreate with our own siblings, so you had more labor at no additional cost?


For some, sex became mechanical and transactional to keep your human capital at an all-time high, never caring about the long-term consequence of devaluing the gift of emotional intimacy. Yet for others, it’s been an exertion of power that to this day destroys lives, families and communities and in many cases used to “KEEP US IN OUR PLACE”.


That’s what I was told as I was being raped by a white jock at Lake Braddock High School in the late 1980’s. “All black bitches deserve to get f*$@d!” That’s what he told me! (Sidebar: He sent me a Facebook Friend Request just a few years ago and is probably reading this post. That’s a whole different conversation.) Yet, when I told my teacher and a counselor in that mostly white school, they did NOTHING about it, reinforcing his words. That’s what I deserved, I guess, resulting in a lifetime of accepting mistreatment and acting out my frustration in unhealthy ways.


Would those words stay with you and instinctively resurface every time anyone in positions of authority say something to justify treating you any kind of way? Ironically, my sons attend the same school and thirty years later, I’m still telling them to turn the other cheek and be the bigger person as their photos and record-breaking banners hang in the trophy boxes, while kids call them niggers in the halls or at their athletic events.

You don’t have to snatch the hood from your child’s head (even when it’s cold outside) in fear that it may make him look like a threat. You don’t have to risk hurting your relationship with your kids, accepting that they believe you’re just mean because you light into them for making a stupid teenage mistake, fearing it will cost them their lives. So, you don’t get to tell me how to feel or react when I am triggered by the continued trauma!


Would you trade a single day in my shoes to understand my pain at THIS level? This isn’t an Escape Room game that is over when you figure out the answer to the clue!


If your God makes this okay, it’s not the same God that I have committed my life to serving because HE promises to heal every broken place in my heart and allow me to be a light of hope for others. Have you twisted the WORD OF GOD to justify your privilege and superiority? I double dog dare you to ask God to search your heart and reveal and heal everything that allows you to choose party and wealth over humanity and justice.


My sense is that both Democrat and Republican affiliations need to go away because the lines are too blurred between the extent of right and wrong and the definition of freedom and prosperity. I love people of all races, backgrounds, religions, sexual orientations, gender identifications because that is what God teaches me to do and I honor God’s will over man’s every day of the week.


JESUS, I BEG YOU TO TAKE THE WHEEL! You brought us here for such a time as this and I do know that ALL THINGS WORK TOGETHER for the good of them that love the Lord and are called according to HIS purpose, not ours! Use me Lord to speak words that soften the hearts of the battered and bruised, the bitter, the entitled, the self-righteous, the ignorant, the greedy, the power hungry, the hopeless, the arrogant, the oppressed and the oppressors and everything in between. Lord let me be the bridge for conversations that inspire healing and unity in Jesus Name I pray. AMEN

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The purpose of this blog is to engage my readers/viewers in thought provoking and action inspiring conversations on various topics that impact our relationships and the world around us. It is not a platform for insults, nor arguments.  Your feedback and questions are always welcome, but unless purposeful to move the conversation along, will not be shared publicly. Thank you in advance for respecting this sacred space.

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