On Juneteenth and Four-Day Weekends for People of Pallor

I will never feel OK about Juneteenth being a federal holiday.

It will never feel right to me that people of pallor pulled a performative flex to give themselves a day off to "celebrate" what is essentially the impacts of their ancestors' enslavement, exploitation, and subjugation of Black bodies on stolen land.

Trust me when I say that 90% of the people of pallor who have today off from work aren't learning, reflecting, or giving their time or money to support Black communities in their cities. I can guarantee most of 'em are using this as a four-day weekend.

Making Juneteenth a federal holiday was never about acknowledging the generational trauma inflicted on Black people, discussing and learning about the ongoing systemic struggles that Black bodies have endured on this stolen land for centuries, or observing the documented end of Black bodies forced into chattel slavery. Making Juneteenth a federal holiday was about people of pallor with power and positionality making themselves feel like "good people" through grandiose performative actions to curry favor from Black folx without having to put in the work necessary to atone for centuries of harm. But ultimately? Making Juneteenth a federal holiday was really about people of pallor with power and positionality making themselves feel like "good people" through grandiose performative actions to curry favor from other "good" people of pallor who want to feel good about themselves.

And knowing that will never allow Juneteenth's status as a federal holiday to feel right in my brain or body.

I wish they had just left it alone.

On Adriana Smith, Anti-Blackness, Experimentation, and Disregard for Black Uteruses and Black Women

Trigger warning: Descriptions of anti-Black woman hate and harm, anti-Blackness, and reproductive trauma.

Adriana Smith and her family should've never had to endure this horrible and traumatic public experiment in postmortem childbirth.

What Georgia did to Adriana Smith would never happen to a person of pallor with a uterus. And there's nobody out there that can tell me otherwise, because trying to deny this fact is an openly raised middle finger to the history of the mistreatment and bodily harm done to Black women and Black bodies for centuries on stolen land.

Even in a country that is on the fast track to remove reproductive rights and body choice from every person with a uterus and jail people for making personal choices that have nothing to do with the state, there is no way this would've been allowed to happen if Adriana Smith were a person of pallor. The news would've been running stories every damn day. Reproductive rights lawyers would've been coming out of the woodwork. But that didn't happen, did it?

And we all know why.

So instead of people of pallor and pallor-led legal aid organizations with power and positionality who claim they care about reproductive rights partnering with Adriana's family to fight for her rights, as they would with any cis woman of pallor with a uterus (because, let's be real, that's about all they would stand up for), last Friday, Georgia performed a C-section on a Black woman who was declared brain-dead in February and forced to be on a ventilator to conceive a child because, you know, laws and sh**.

And now, this 1-pound, 13-ounce child whose deceased mother was kept on a ventilator, unable to provide the nutrients needed to fully nurture his growth and development, is now fighting for his life in the neonatal intensive care unit because, you know, laws and sh**.

Cis women of pallor love quoting The Handmaid's Tale to describe the level of danger people with uteruses are in while openly choosing not to sit with the undeniable fact that Black women and Black bodies have always been subject to centuries of Handmaid's Tale-level sh** at the hands of people of pallor since colonizers forced Black bodies into chattel slavery.

Adriana deserved better.

Her child deserved better.

Black women deserve better.

On Saving Those Not Worthy of Your Save

It's the year of someone's Lord 2025 and a whole bunch of y'all are still out here trying to "get through to" hateful, willfully ignorant bigots, hoping to convert them.

Oh, Bro, Broseph, Bro-ham.

Oh, Sister, Sis, Ma'am.

Oh, my friend, my compadre, my peoples.

Y'all gotta stop with the tryin' to save these people.

To paraphrase light-skinned Jermaine, they don't wanna be saved.

People are defending Diddy and Tory Lanez out here, and trying to shame and ridicule those they've harmed. You can't save anybody that deeply enmeshed in that level of misogynoir.

There's a whole bunch of [redacted] people mad that Black folx are happy about the Nottaway Plantation roasting 'til the meat fell off the bone who have the audacity to call it a historical landmark and say tasteless nonsense like, "How would you feel if Auschwitz burned down like this?" You think you're gonna save someone who spews something so simultaneously anti-Black and anti-semetic that it'll make your head spin off of your neck?

There are millions of people who have spent the last 12 years voting for this current administration, knowing damn well what they were backing. Many of them are gleeful about the harm y'all's president and his Dollar General Batman villains are doing to communities across this country, including their own communities. You can't save somebody whose hatred for others is so powerful that they're willing to fall on their own sword multiple times to justify their hatred.

The past 12+ years in this country have made it clear - explicitly clear - that it's time to leave some people behind. If you haven't pivoted already, consider this your notice to turn around and walk away from hateful people and their unflinching toxicity. Focus your energies on the folx in your life and community that need support, because those are the folx who deserve your help and care.

Everybody ain't worth savin', regardless of their relation or degrees of separation from you and yours.

Hate doesn't deserve so much of your love.

On Tyre Nichols, Policing, and Policing While Black

TW: Police brutality, murder, anti-Blackness.

The Tyre Nichols verdict shows you how policing systems, police officers, and laws surrounding accountability in white supremacist countries ensure the safety of police officers from accountability for doing heinous things, skin color be damned.

To be Black and willingly complicit in systems of harm and inequity that oppress Black people is to make a choice on the kind of Black person you want to be.

Blackness ain't a monolith.

But policing sure as hell is.

On Hate, Bigotry, The Hold They Have on People, and Not Having Hobbies or Interests

I often think about the amount of energy that goes into being an absolutely hateful person. Like, think about how much time hateful people spend ruminating about communities and groups they hate. To hate someone based on their skin color, non-Christian religious beliefs, gender identity, gender expression, ethnocultural heritage...and to devote copious amounts of time - to devote chunks of your lifetime - to harassing and attacking said communities and groups in every space you can find...

You ain't got NOTHING else to do?

No interests, hobbies, or passions outside of your hatred for others?

Like, there are folx out there right now literally spending thousands of hours targeting folx who are minding their business, living their lives, doing nothing to them and for what? What do they have to show for it, outside of successfully fomenting their unwarranted phobias and isms? It's not like they're getting any joy out of it. It's not filling a void in their lives, or giving them a leg up on anyone, or making their lives better. Studies have shown that it's not even providing a momentary satisfaction for them when they do it.

What's the point, other than to live your life as an antagonist that thinks you're better than others?

They don't even realize that their insecurities are on display every time they do what they do, and that we all have to live with the fallout of their unwillingness to unpack their sh-- with a therapist.

Think about how preposterous and useless it is to dedicate so much of your time and energy to attacking trans folx, Black and Brown folx, communities of color, queer communities, non-Christian folx, who ain't even thinkin' about you.

You could be building boats in bottles or doin' needle point but instead you out here trolling people for hours on social media or going out of your way to be in a space with people you claim to not want to be around.

What a waste of time and life.