Thread by @patricia_a_tay

On Sundays like today, after a violent tragedy that claims any Black lives in the name of racism, I used to feel sick to my stomach before heading into the white evangelical church I was attending.

I’d be bracing myself for silence or some stumbled over, half-baked proclamation that my life was important but we shouldn’t say Black Lives Matter too loud (if at all), because we might offend somebody.

On days like today the rage seethes through me when I think of these same churches' continued complicity in wh*te supremacist ideology.

The ones who’d rather silence or even remove the vocal Black advocates in their midst because they’re “too” outspoken and their tone is “too” harsh and their voice is “too” influential.

All the while the racist conspiracy theorists who troll these same Black members when they’re hurting and in grievous pain, pull up a chair in the front row of the church with their unchecked hatred oozing from their pores and they call it grace.

It’s these same good church folks who are storming school board meetings and running for office in the name of banishing the boogeyman they’ve created in CRT.

The same ones who spent the last 2 years trying to convince us that masks are oppressive, science is fake and 1 million bodies lost to Cov*d is no big deal, because the truth is they’ve never cared about anything that impacts Black and brown bodies disproportionately.

It’s the never-ending hypocrisy that’s soul sucking to me.

It extends to when they speak to the “sanctity of life” but are far more concerned w/holding onto their assault rifles than they do the actual care & thriving of any baby that’s born outside the confines of their white,male, cisgender, heteronormative standards of acceptability.

It’s days like today I want to scream and yell and throw things, as I think about the soft language that’s used when wh*te men go on killing sprees, but Black boys who wear hoodies or go jogging, or Black women who were asleep, are all dangerous thugs who had it coming.

I have no desire for platitudes.

I have no desire for your I’m sorry‘s.

I know some of you mean it and your actions may show it, but I’m too tired to parse those out from the ones who will be mad for a day or two then go back to their lives completely unfazed because they will never grasp the depths of this painful reality.

My thoughts and prayers and rage and sadness are with the families and friends of the victims of the wh*te terrorist shooting in #Buffalo, and to the Asian community reeling from the anti-Asian violent hate crimes in Dallas this week, you are also on my heart this morning. 💔