I see it every day: Supporters of White supremacy are jealous of our talents, our beauty, our struggle, our wit and our premise through which we dance off the plagues of the world, how we laugh hard because we know clear as crisp morning sun-lit air the difference between pain and the brief moment of joy to celebrate.
Supporters of White supremacy constantly go behind the view of public record and out of the frame of justice’s view to defend, cheat for and uphold shareholders and representatives of White supremacy — racist tactics disguised under the seemingly white-sheep term of “order” and preference holders for occupiers of high title.
You won’t hear the N-word so much, or find an employee break lounge labeled “colored,” but the distinctions still persist.
The reminders of your worth to them are constantly made at every opportunity. It’s sly, sometimes with a wink or a patronizing smile.
We have to bathe in Black Love, Black Joy, community and support.
So in this mirage of life we live, in against these selectively agreed-upon realities between what we see and know and the frightful denial of White privilege and its father, we have to make ourselves even more present. We have to self-preserve our souls in lavish renewal of mind, body and spirit. We have to bathe in Black Love, Black Joy, community and support.
White supremacy can’t stand us. They don’t want to see us happy and successful. I see the seething feeling of defeat when a Black person gets credit for what they did or is given their rightful share.
Do they know that bitterness stings longer than the instant of a bee? Bitterness is continual frustration and jealousy of what is not owned or possessed. What logic be there in denying those the same fundamental truths to which they rely on for the support and existence, to which they find themselves in?
All this hatred is a waste of energy. They’d be so much happier if they weren’t worried about being better than us. What is there to prove? Is this really all there is?
See, the story told here is the same story told across any sphere’s pond: Living Black is more than hard. People are people, proven by the intricate fabrication of a society working against us. Because if we weren’t human too, there’d be nothing to be afraid of or fame to lose. But those who seek to gain everything, worry in the plot of the collection and miss the true valuables while gathering and storing desires only to store in a closed heart.
Maybe that’s why we’ve heard it said, “The last shall be first and the first shall be last.”
Gui Jean-Paul Chevalier is a Seattle-based recording artist and author from rural Washington, living counter-small-town-minded for the cause of humanity.
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