As always thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes! For those of you that know me this is the day I recount, relive, and reflect on the year since my last b-day. As always it can be long and there are a few people who will get to the end (a few I hope will) but I realize I’m not writing this for them because it’s my BIRTHDAY!
Also, again here is the place you can tap out, I appreciate you getting this far – deuces!
Whew! Reflecting on another journey around the sun, this year has been an emotional rollercoaster. A year that ran the gambit, the excitement of gaining a daughter-in-law, reveling in the pure Black Joy of the Chosen Few Picnic, and the hope of a woman president, a Black woman, to the deepest despair when she lost. I vote elections be moved to July, so they stop ruining my birthday month. Well, if 47 is right I won’t have to worry about when elections are anymore.
Missy Anne (Roots) betrayed us all, well at least 53% of you did. The vision of hope and change Obama talked about has been choked to death by the white establishment. The things we thought might have given us a chance for a level playing field DEI, Supplier Diversity, and Affirmative Action will all be things of the past. Aspirations. These notions will be stricken from the records as if they never existed. The question for Black people is why we still desire to be as Dr. King said, “…integrated into a burning house.”.
I asked myself what I’m going to do for the next lap around the sun. I weighed all the options, starting at survival by assimilation, code switching, and going back to “safe negro” status. I’ve done them all and was damn good at being white adjacent. Being a sellout, one of those who would betray their own to be acceptable to others. Don’t say Uncle Tom, read the real history of the man and you will take that one out of your lexicon of slang. Images of Tim Scott and Byron Donalds are enough to make me not even consider this option.
So, I choose to continue my journey into Blackness, unlearning the lies and learning the truth. Now at 62, I am my full Black self, FAAFO! I will suffer no fools. Now it is dangerous to be Black, but the question is when wasn’t it?
The coming year and hopefully for many more, I will continue my spiritual journey by asking the questions that make people uncomfortable – Whose God is winning and why is Jesus depicted as white? I pray to ALL the Gods because I don’t know which one…
I’m learning about mental health both my own and others, and recognizing it is a real thing. Ten years ago, I thought it was “junk science” something white people made up because they couldn’t deal with the pressures of everyday life. Oh, how we grow. The “boxes” in my head are still up there, I may have unpacked one or two, but I also know that I have probably added a few. Today, I think I’m an 8 but may secretly be lying to myself, and maybe even you that have gotten to this point. The growth is in the fact that you know when you are lying to yourself and tomorrow you could be a 3.
The “they” Kendrick rapped about and on constant repeat all summer shifts. In the song, the “they “was still part of the diaspora. The they we should be worried about is the same people who have plagued and tormented Black people for hundreds of years. Those who are afraid of us, those who want to take away our freedom. They want to take away our freedom and make sure those black jobs are in the fields when America was great. I plan on spending whatever time I have left here on this side of the ancestral plane working to make sure we don’t go back. I want to help build a fireproof Greenwood.
If you read this far thank you for the gift. I appreciate the calls, texts, and posts that prove I exist in your world and mean something to you.
