This person—a Black imam—sounds like he is MAD that folks are protesting for Black lives. Don’t let nobody’s sunken place theology lead you in a ditch. #BlackLivesMattter IS A MORAL DECLARATION, even for those who are coming into new awareness of that fact. @manrilla Look this ain’t hard. Are there opportunists in movement spaces who adopt movement rhetoric when it seems expedient to do so? ALL THE TIME. But if you are in it to win it, you engage that in ways that benefits the movement needs anyway. Hold folks feet to the fire long term.

It’s always remarkable to me in a time of deep community crisis all of the loud male voices who are usually bleating about their alleged God-given right to lead are suspiciously quiet—and all the women I know have already moved in to clean up the mess and trauma. And I’m including here those religious leaders and syncophants who aren’t brave enough to state their misogyny outright and this hide under cover of denigrating “activism” (code for women’s work). Where are the “scholars” who are supposed to save errybody?

People often say that forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. What we don’t say often enough is that giving yourself permission, without censure/shame, to feel emotions that naturally accompany being wronged but are stigmatized as pathological or less than pious is also a gift. If you can’t or don’t want to rush through your anger or grief or resentment, if you don’t want to absolve that person or allow them proximity to you (even if it’s affective proximity), forgive yourself for being human. Because uncomfortable emotions are a part of that too.