Thread by @KosherSoul

When I was middle school, I was on a bus on a field trip and John whatever his name was' father decided to put a sticker from a potato chip bag on me and when I grasped at it from behind he chuckled and said "Thats your worth." This blue eyed white man thought this was ok to do.

And so when I hear some radicalized white parents deliberately confusing social justice and CRT and BIPOC consciousness with each other and using it as a political weapon, I remember how growing up defeating my self esteem was critical to their whiteness being a form of currency.

Nothing has value without arbitrary and subjective consensus. As long as oppositional whiteness is a form of currency we will have these fights. These radicalized parents know the power of self esteem and history and identity and shaping a narrative.

This sits alongside a desperate need to keep entertainment Blackness on life support to draw energy from. The pushback against discussion of appropriation DELIBERATELY confuses fusion, diffusion&convivial exchange with exploitative forms of cultural theft and unwanted rebranding

So the Black body is still a commodity in sports, porn, libidinous sub-cultures and kinesthetic and fine arts where music and dance are the mediums of expression. The culture, history and intellect of Black ppl is assumed to be marginal or disposable and completely unnecessary.

Sitting on that bus I didn't feel small, I felt like punching him. I knew I wasn't worth 75 cents, that my body and mind were not a commodity. I knew my state of mind&sense of self worth were priceless&I knew whatever my "worth" was it was not up to some smug WASP to determine.

Its so interesting that we have a crop of Black skinfolk who desperately want to make coin off of white people coming to awareness that this constant auctioning and assessment of Black value is harmful by reassuring them that systemic racist practices are too vague to define

They reassure white angsters they are justified in their reactionary and confused positions and do little if nothing to translate the hurt beyond "race," preferring to project that energy back on us as if it were our initial responsibility or ongoing fault.

Nobody wants to tell the angsters the truth. They cannot put oppressed and marginalized people back in the place assigned us centuries ago to save them from a world where will share more things than ever before. Redemption, reconciliation, restorative justice and reparation now.

And to John's father. My value isn't 75 cents my value is the fact that I am a mensch. My value is that I'm the Southern gentleman my parents and grandparents raised me to be. My value is that I refuse to let our culture as African Atlantic and African Diaspora ppl die. 1

My value is that My Ancestors are proud of me and I have friends and family from across the human race& I know the value of others rests in being created in the image of The Creator, blessed be They/Them. My value is the love I feel for myself as a Black man while loving humanity

My value is my queerness, my Jewishness, the code, the source code inside of me that gives me millenia of staying power, survival skills, humor and fierceness. If you got all that for 75 cents then baby you hit the jackpot...
End.