As a New Yorker, I didn’t learn of Juneteenth until I was a teenager and was absolutely dumbfounded by the audacity of white people keeping the news of our freedom to themselves for years after emancipation. It was then that I also learned of how decades earlier slave owners had kept the news of Haitian revolt and emancipation from other enslaved Africans in the diaspora for fear of inspiring new revolts. Now that apartheid in Israel and the conditions of mines in the Congo have become more common knowledge, the audacity of whiteness fits squarely

The mood is celebratory yet without holding the Democratic Party accountable on the issues that are progressively meaningful to BIPOC communities, from police, to education, healthcare, etc... they will move forward with a neoliberal plan that will simply offer more of the same. We shouldn’t wait for another black life to be taken by police to demand that their funding be rerouted.

We also have to pressure the nation to end imperialist violence abroad if we are to truly end fascism.

Here’s a tip:

Take the words DARK or BLACK in connection to bad, evil, ominous or scary events out of your vocabulary.

We learn the stock market crashed on Black Monday, we read headlines that purport “Dark Days Ahead” there’s “dark” or “black” humour which implies an undertone of evil, and then there are people like me who grow up with dark skin having to make sense of the English/American lexicon and it’s history of “fair complexions” -where “fair” can mean “light; blond.” OR “in accordance