On Y'all's President, Racist Depictions of the Only Non-White U.S. President and his Wife, and Apologists

“I think the president might be racist.”

Oh, really? Y’think so? What clued you in?

“I’m sure the president made a mistake in posting that video.”

You sure about that? Are you new to the world of this man posting hateful and racist memes online? Did you miss the two other times he posted pictures of Barack and Michelle as apes?

“I’m not sure if I can support this administration anymore after seeing this.”

Oh, I see. This was your breaking point, huh? THIS was your breaking point after giving this man your vote for 12 years and watching EVERYTHING he has done to the country. THIS was your breaking point?

Y’all make my brain tired.

[Image description: a montage of pictures of the legendary musician Prince giving the viewer the side-eye. These images are captioned with, “Me, watching people of pallor and pallor apologists responding to the video y’all’s president posted of Barack and Michelle Obama being depicted as primates say things like, “I think the president might be racist,” “I’m sure the president made a mistake on posting that video,” and “I’m not sure if I can continue to support this administration anymore after seeing that.”]

Image description: a montage of pictures of the legendary musician Prince giving the viewer the side-eye. These images are captioned with, “Me, watching people of pallor and pallor apologists responding to the video y’all’s president posted of Barack and Michelle Obama being depicted as primates say things like, “I think the president might be racist,” “I’m sure the president made a mistake on posting that video,” and “I’m not sure if I can continue to support this administration anymore after seeing that.”

This Week's Opening Thought: February 2, 2026

This week's opening thought, directed toward people of pallor: It's Black History Month. I usually prepare some knowledge to drop all month, some calls to action, things of that nature. But this year?

Nah, I'm tight.

I don't feel like doin' this with people of pallor this year.

I don't feel like educating y'all, or correcting y'all, or dodging online "debates" with y'all, especially the "well-meaning liberals" out there. At this point, the white supremacy has been white supremacy-ing in such visceral ways on this stolen land that I'm not going to spend my Black History Month dealing with y'all and your "big feelings" and "hot takes" about the abuses even the nicest of y'all inflict on Black bodies, how U.S. history is legitimately Black history (whether y'all want to acknowledge it or not), and how y'all don't want to read a book but want to have us teach you for free about the same concepts over and over again.

Nah. I'm tight.

I've educated enough of you. WE have educated enough of you for centuries. We've shared enough of ourselves with y'all over the years with the hope of getting through to you, even during this most critical of times in this country's racist, hateful history, just to watch y'all butcher Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes while making the concept of "helping" melanated people oppressed by y'all's systems sound like a chore you deserve allowance or restitution for. And through all of that, we're expected to spend an entire month - the shortest month of the year - continuing to hold your hands and "giving y'all grace" as you don't learn or unlearn anything?

Nah. I'm good.

And I know I'm not the only one.

So instead of spending the month of February doing what is essentially unpaid outreach work with people of pallor, I'm gonna spend Black History Month chillin' in my beautiful Blackness and embracing joy, giddily bereft of the need to sit with y'all's messiness as the world burns. Maybe I'll see y'all in March? Who knows?

Try not to homogenize or water down any quotes from Black people to force them to appeal to pallor sensibilities while I'm gone.

On Cities Church, ICE, and a Toxic Situationship

Georgia Fort, Don Lemon, Trahern Jeen Crews, and Jamael Lydell Lundy were arrested this morning at the direction of y'all's president's Attorney General Pam Bondi. This is not even a week after the arrests of Nekima Levy Armstrong, Chauntyll Louisa Allen, and William Kelly. All of this is said to be connected to the Cities Church protest in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which this regime/administration has painted as "an act of domestic terrorism." What actually happened was a protest of the Church's leadership after it was discovered that the Church's pastor, David Easterwood, is the acting field director of the Minnesota branch of the taxpayer-funded slave-catcher domestic terrorist group ICE.

Now, mind you, not one act of violence happened in Cities Church during that protest. Those who entered the building violated no laws. They went in to hold the pastor of the Church - the man who was supposedly leading this congregation - accountable for being an ICE director and selling out members of the community he's supposed to be serving.

Now, some of you may see this protest as a violation of the place of worship. Sure. Why not? I mean, I hope you look at all of the violations of mosques and synagogues in this country by xenophobic "Homeland Security" agents in the same way you're viewing this act of protest in a Western culture-driven church building, but I'm going to guess most folx who view this as a "violation" aren't exactly the most accepting. Take that as you will.

Regardless, seven people have been arrested as "ring leaders" of a "violent coordinated attack", six of whom are Black and two of whom are journalists.

Again, no crime was committed. But we live in a horrifically toxic situationship where the federal government can paint anything as a crime and waste taxpayer dollars trying to prosecute people, especially Black and Brown people, on trumped-up and ridiculous charges ad nauseam if people of pallor who support the white supremacist regime and its leaders are "in danger" of being held accountable for their hatred. I mean, they tried to prosecute Letitia James three times for holding y'all's president accountable for his actions, and they would've tried a fourth time if they weren't shut down by the courts.

And guess what? There's not a lot of media coverage around the optics of this moment or the arrests of respected journalists. Why?

Because people of pallor only care about the optics when journalists of pallor are arrested.

People of pallor only step in when they don't fear for their comfort and well-being.

People of pallor speak up about hate when they can, then move on without giving it another thought.

As for the rest of us? The Black and Brown? The melanated?

I suppose it's just another Friday in the United States, one where we find ourselves sharing information the media and the masses are avoiding, while being tired of asking those who are willfully asleep or faking it to wake up.

Let us know when y'all are done sleeping.

On "Survival"

I've seen a lot of talk about what the U.S. will look like if we "survive" this moment in time. And because I prefer to live in the space of an honest assessment of the situation, I'm gonna level with y'all:

The United States of America is not "surviving" this.

If we're honest with ourselves and take a moment to examine the trajectory of the past 20+ years, this moment of authoritarian white supremacist oppression was inevitable. We've been inching toward this moment since 9/11, and we barreled into this after the elections of Barack Obama. These moments in time broke whiteness so severely that whiteness as an entity felt driven to do the one thing its excelled at for generations: preserving its tenuous grasp by vilifying anyone who opposes the comfort of white supremacy and assert that whiteness is the dominant power in the culture. So people of pallor with power and influence began inching toward rigging the legal system and the highest court in the land, removing laws and regulations, enacting policies and laws that exploited loopholes intended to oppress and subjugate, and essentially figuring out how to give an acting president of pallor the powers of a dictator. And now?

White supremacy has reached an apex that this country hasn't seen since its infancy. And honestly?

We will not "survive" this.

We are not coming back from this. There is no "return to normal" or "go back to [insert timeline here]" because we never LEFT white supremacy. What you're seeing right now is quintessentially the United States and its colonizer mentality resurfacing in the ways of the "forefathers" to give people of pallor enough comfort to once again openly normalize them believing non-white citizens are theirs to oppress, blame for the current state of the country (although people of pallor are predominantly in the positions that impact the state of the country), and feel superior to. And it took people of pallor being viscerally murdered by systems they thought were intended to only harm non-white citizens to get some of them to question what many of us have lived with for generations.

Unless people of pallor suddenly have a damn near collective awakening that lasts more than a moment, this is where we're at and where we'll remain: regression with uphill battles that many people of pallor will use their privilege to step in and out of as they see fit, ensuring we never inch forward. And I have no reason to have faith in white U.S. America reaching a tipping point that pushes the majority of them to stand up, keep fighting even when it's hard to see a light on the horizon, and use their power and privilege to help those who have spent their lives fighting to change the system make something happen.

Black, Brown, and Indigenous folx? Most communities of color? We'll "survive." We've grown accustomed to the state of things and we've learned how to fight and stay in the fight for the long haul. But white U.S. America?

Y'all got a long "survival" road ahead.

This Week's Opening Thought: January 26, 2026

TW: mentions of murder, white supremacy, violence.

This week's opening thought, for people of pallor: With everything that has transpired in Minneapolis, Minnesota, it is clear to me that people of pallor are so deeply entrenched in systems of white supremacy and the privilege they receive from them that even their "activism" is swaddled in blankets of white supremacy.

Over the past few days, I've seen y'all saying things like, "This isn't what America stands for", and what's happening is "unprecedented" and that nothing like this has ever happened before. Some of y'all are out here saying wild things like you miss "regular" police brutality. Throngs of people of pallor are calling for Kristi Noem's impeachment and quoting and resharing things from every Black activist and scholar they can find to frame their "this is our moment" narrative and it's equal parts hilarious, infuriating, and banal because it's so obvious that y'all have no clue how to react when the systems that were built to elevate, protect, coddle, and gas you up are being utilized to oppress and kill you if you don't "comply" and get back to being docile.

Y'all are lost right now. Y'all don't know what to do with yourselves because you've grown accustomed to those you've oppressed saving and guiding you to a place where you can continue to feel safe in the cocoon of white supremacy while engaging in, at best, beginner-level activism against the system that has protected you most of your life. Y'all fully expected Black and Brown folx, Black women, Indigenous folx to save y'all and continue getting beaten and killed for your comfort and safety. But we're not stepping in to "lead" you right now because we're taking care of our own. And now y'all are left to figuring out how to mobilize and create plans of action on your own because y'all obviously have learned nothing from us over hundreds of years of us fighting for basic rights and survival and us writing books and teaching y'all how to fight. So now y'all are barely weeks and months into fighting the oppressors and I can see that most of y'all are already lost, already exhausted, and growing increasingly angry at us for leaving you to see how "fun" it is to dismantle YOUR systems of oppression with no collective assistance.

Here's some facts for you:

This is EXACTLY what (the United States of) America stands for.

This moment is only "unprecedented" for people of pallor. There's a few newer twists at play, but versions of this have been happening to Black, Brown, and Indigenous folx, and most communities of color, for centuries on this stolen land. The murder, the oppression, the gaslighting? It's been happening. It just wasn't happening to YOU.

And you only want to go back to "regular" police brutality because it allows you not to feel the inhumanity of the systems that support you when you "behave."

You want us to be fully in this moment with y'all and not focused on just protecting our own and working toward our own liberation and safety?

Then keep your "hot takes" to yourselves.

Save and channel your anger toward upending our mutual oppressors.

Get yourselves prepared for what melanated folx have been trying to get y'all to prepare for and get on board with for hundreds of years.

Show us something that compels us to believe that we should stand by your side against our common oppressors for the long and exhausting battles ahead.

Or put some seasoning on your face for the leopards and wait for them to come to a neighborhood near you.

The choice is yours.

Sad thing is, most of y'all have already made your choice.

Image description: a screenshot of a person of pallor saying, "Can we just go back to regular police brutality, please?" followed by a Black woman responding with "Ahh yes the kind only Black and Brown folx wsere subjected to, right? Girl, delete this."

[Image description: a screenshot of a person of pallor saying, "Can we just go back to regular police brutality, please?" followed by a Black woman responding with "Ahh yes the kind only Black and Brown folx wsere subjected to, right? Girl, delete this."]