Serious thanks for this question. I'll attempt a thread. #WhiteSupremacistAntichristPoltergeist is a handy way of naming a spirit that gets hold of people. As a Tennessean who attended a segregationist academy for twelve years, I know feelingly that it's had hold of me.
Calling it a spirit helps me have compassion on myself and others while also acknowledging that I've often been complicit in a system that's often served the ends of white supremacist terror. My blindness to it doesn't change the fact of it. WSAP is real AND ridiculous.
This statue (a white supremacist terror idol) has been worthy of ridicule my whole life long. Have I ridiculed it at any point in my fifty years in Nashville? No. I'd never done the research. It's been an abomination all along. Yesterday, it came down.
I think @GovBillLee & @michaelwsmith & @StevenCurtis & @SenAlexander & @MarshaBlackburn & @drmoore know it's an abomination. Do they feel free to say so? Maybe not. Why not? #WhiteSupremacistAntichristPoltergeist
See what I did there? I referenced all these famous people without calling them white supremacist or antichrist AND I referenced an awesome movie about America. I'm not name-calling. I'm naming a force, a power constellation that doesn't like to be named, a power-exerting spirit.
I'll never be able to see that spirit as clearly as my sisters and brothers of color, but I am, I pray, teachable. Thoreau says we all crave reality in one way or another. I think this is true. How much reality we're willing to acknowledge publicly is another matter entirely.
#WhiteSupremacistAntichristPoltergeist (as a phrase) helps me acknowledge more reality that I'm generally comfortable with, but I owe it to myself (and others) to accept & act on more reality as I age. It's my job as a fellow creature citizen to try to be more real.
I talk about this in my books, but @DaultRadio was kind enough to put to the question to me directly. He's awesome. thingsnotseenradio.com/shows/1917-dark
ALSO, the form of #BelovedCommunity called church has named these challenges before (See Barmen & Belhar) and even as recently as January 2017: ame-church.com/wp-content/upl…
"More reality that" should've been "more reality than." Also, @E_Reid35 is calling out @vp for behaving like a #whitesupremacistantichristpoltergeist host body on the federal dime here:
