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.

Day 11

Y'all's president blamed DEI for the unfortunate and fatal collision of an American Airlines passenger jet and a military helicopter.

You read that right - he blamed DEI.

Dozens died, their families grieving, after the deadliest U.S. air disaster in two decades, yet somehow, Black and Brown folx, queer folx, and people with disabilities are the reason this happened. Not the FAA being in disarray due to his executive orders; no, that can't be it. According to y'all's president, it has to be the Blacks, Latinos, and people with disabilities whom the FAA and airlines have hired "overqualified, intelligent" white cis male candidates.

Sounds about white.

He has no evidence of anything regarding diversity, equity, or inclusion having ANYTHING to do with this horrific tragedy, but, you know, white supremacy and bigotry have never had to have an excuse for levying out hate, even in the most inappropriate moments like, I don't know, people mourning the loss of their loved one.

60% of cis males of pallor and 53% of cis women of pallor voted for this. You voted for this lack of empathy and humanity. You voted for misinformation, deflection, and no accountability. You voted for a man who fired the heads of the TSA and the Coast Guard on his second day in office because he felt they were "too woke." You voted for a man who is so harmful that the previous head of the FAA resigned rather than serve under him (he was likely going to get fired like the heads of the TSA and Coast Guard). You voted for a man who gutted the Aviation Security Advisory Committee. What's that? Oh, just a bipartisan committee created to examine safety issues at airlines and airports. Before he disbanded the committee, the group included representatives of all the key groups in the aviation industry — including the airlines and major unions as well as representatives from groups that represented the families of people lost to airline bombings. The vast majority of the group’s recommendations were adopted over the years. But they don't really exist anymore.

Because, you know, DEI.

It's day 11, y'all.

How to Cook Like The People You Just Deported

Image description: a faux cover to a cookbook entitled, "How to Cook Like The People You Just Deported: Authentic Ethnic Flavors for Bigots who Don't Deserve Them."

It never shocks me how much ethnocultural impact communities of color, the Global Majority, Black and Brown folx, have on people of pallor and what they think is the "American way" of life.

There is no "U.S. culture" without melanin building its foundations and giving the whole thing flavor and life.

A whole lot of y'all hate AAPI communities, yet love your Christmas Day Chinese dinner.

A whole lot of y'all hate Black folx but love fried chicken, peanut butter, every bit of southern cuisine on the continent, and hundreds of dishes and food combinations created by Black folx as the original struggle meals that you now posit as "upscale cuisine."

A whole lot of y'all hate Indigenous communities but have stolen their fashion and cultural heritage to use as aesthetics to deck out your bodies and homes.

A whole lot of y'all hate Mexican, Hispanic, and Latine communities but enjoy the creature comforts of the food they harvest, cultivate, and grow.

But, you know, gon' 'head and deport and endanger the legitimate backbone of your country like it's not going to upend the comfy-ass multi-colored tapestry of an existence you live in and benefit from.

[Image description: a faux cover to a cookbook entitled, "How to Cook Like The People You Just Deported: Authentic Ethnic Flavors for Bigots who Don't Deserve Them."]

On An Election and A Country's True Identity

I'm not surprised. I'm saddened, but I’m not surprised.

I'm unsurprised that 59% of men of pallor and 52% of women of pallor voted the way they did. I'm sadly not surprised that after everything he said and will do to immigrants when he takes office, he still got 54% of the masculine-identifying and 37% of the feminine-identifying Latine and Hispanic vote.

I'm saddened, but I’m not surprised.

I am disheartened but unsurprised.

I didn’t need a reminder, but for those who did, this election was a firm reminder that the United States is precisely what it has always been: a country steeped in individualism and fear of moving forward, unwilling to be progressive and care for all its citizens, and legitimately uninterested in trying to be the country it likes to claim it is.

He won this election, and it wasn't even close in the popular or electoral vote. A party with a platform of hate, oppression, and regression will be in complete control of the Government come January 2025, and it wasn't even a fight.

And I know so many of y'all voted for this man and this party while playin’ in the faces of the people in your life who you know their policies and governance will do extreme harm to. Most of y'all are quick to bust out a Black Lives Matter sign or bring up trans and reproductive rights just to have a smoke screen to vote against everyone’s best interests.

I loathe that most of y'all won’t own your hatred and fear of losing what you think is exclusively yours - rights, privileges, and safety from tyranny.

I loathe that most of y'all won’t own who you are in front of those your choices impact.

I loathe that most of y’all will be shocked when the people you elected do the exact things you hired them to do and you find yourself and your families adversely impacted and in physical, mental, emotional, and economic distress.

But I’m not surprised.

You're Americans! That's what Americans do, right?

I'm saddened. I'm disheartened. I'm not surprised, though.

This is the American way, y'all.

Note: This poll data is from a subsection of the voter base from 10 states.

On Whiteness, Identity, and Sliced Bread

One of the most dangerous things that people of pallor created when they decided that being accepted as a person of pallor was somehow better than sliced bread was creating the homogenized identity that we all know as whiteness.

People of pallor are so generationally removed from their identities, their cultural identities, and so deep in the trenches of white conformity and norms that a person of pallor being "unapologetically white" is a hate crime waiting to happen. Like so many people of culture, Black, Brown, and Indigenous folx, folx from AAPI communities are so proud of their identities and wear them proudly. I'm unapologetically Black. I have rarely felt fear when a person of culture shares how proud they are of their culture and heritage. But the moment I see and hear a person of pallor screaming about being "unapologetically white" or "white pride," I feel a chill up my spine because it always comes with a bucket of hate speech, fragility, and violence.

Think about how messed up it is to create a construct to trumpet to the heavens that you're somehow superior to any person with deeper tones in their skin than your own, only to make the most paper-thin and traumatized faux culture in the history of the world, one that has done irreparable generational damage to people of pallor while placing everyone else in a constant state of danger.

I prefer sliced bread.