Opportunity Seems to Come Out of Nowhere but Nah...

Wow, guys.

The world is changing before our eyes, is it not? When George Floyd's daughter said, "My daddy changed the world" she had NO idea.

We're seeing the domino effect of Black Lives Matter because hey let's face it, not all of us value even our own lives as much as we do white lives or white adjacent lives. Hell, I hear the police in Kenya are harassing black protestors in front of the US embassy and leaving the white protestors alone. 

But let's go back to the genesis of this - Colonialism and the myth of White Supremacy.

Our history has been erased. Who we were, what we are capable of...even now it continues to be erased. The lack of COVID in New Zealand celebrated. But what about Mauritius? Also have eliminated COVID. Nobody is celebrating it. No, the press is waiting for African bodies to start dropping in the streets to train their cameras and say "You see! Africans are dying of COVID in droves."

But here we are, continuing to defy expectations. 

Nobody is talking about it. Yesterday I was thinking about how in other ways, everybody is erased from history except for white men. According to history books, they did everything. But think about it. Marilyn Monroe offered to sit in the front row of a club so that they would let Ella Fitzgerald perform. That's the only evidence of activism I have of the people around JFK. What if, as his sidechick, Marilyn did some whispering in his ear about civil rights? But she's never mentioned in his history aside from anecdotally so we'll never know. The women are never mentioned. But who is leading Black Lives Matter protests on the streets right now?

Living through 'interesting times' as they say really brings home so many revelations to me. Do you think K-Pop stans will be mentioned in the official history books? How they drowned out the voices of racists with fan cam videos? How they flooded Dallas police snitch sites with fan cam videos? How they matched BTS one million dollar donation to Black Lives Matter with a million dollars of their own?

No, I expect that will be buried in favour of whatever speech Al Sharpton will eventually make.

But what has brought us here? I blame food.

You see I write a lot of historical romance for a living and in my research on what a regency household served for dinner or what Scots ate in the 1500s, what jumps out at me is the sheer blandness of the food. So they travelled around the world and found that not everyone was living with boiled apples and roasted venison. They discovered places which had tea, tobacco, and spices. They discovered silk. They discovered precious stones. They coveted.

But they had nothing to trade. Nothing these people would want anyway, so they decided to take. And the way to take would be to use the one skill that they have honed better than anyone else. Manipulation and lying. They turned Christianity into a weapon. They used guns as a tool of power and fear. They decided to use the colour of their skin as a status symbol. They wrote the history books and so they turned myth into fact.

 Centuries of conditioning later, and most people didn't even question it. Not white people, not black people, not Asian people. 

Very many people still don't.

Every day though, those people grow less blind. Thank you, Cheeto Satan, for showing everyone white supremacy's ass.

So here's where opportunity comes in.

A man named George Floyd was killed by four policemen. His funeral, in fact, was yesterday. In the face of the protests, it was easy to forget that at the centre of this latest uprising is a dead man. Yesterday's funeral brought it home to me with a bang. Man, I hate funerals.

Anyway, so.

A man was killed, the four policemen who killed him were fired. And then it looked like that would be the end of that. Except...a video of a man being chased by two white men and subsequently killed had just been doing the rounds. Ahmaud Abery's killers were yet to be tried and convicted. Breonna Taylor was shot in her bed by police, as she slept when they raided the wrong house. George Floyd's death, captured in HD and lasting eight minutes and forty-six seconds was just that last straw. 

It was too much really.

So 1+1+1 made infinity. First locally, then regionally, then countrywide, then international; the cry for justice spread like wildfire. Now it wasn't just justice for George Floyd although that remains the kindling. No, it's justice for everyone who has ever been unjustly killed or hurt by police brutality. It's a cry for an end to that particular scourge.

People are finally seeing the biggest gang in the world for what it is. A racket. A tool of imperialism designed to oppress and suppress rather than to serve and protect. Or rather, they serve and protect the authors of imperialism. They make sure you and I, stay in line. 

And now people are saying NO.

It seems to have come out of nowhere, this opportunity to change the world but it's actually the result of slow attrition. Starting with Trayvon Martin and that jury which set George Zimmerman free and birthed the Black Lives Matter movement. George Zimmerman showing his ass so that anyone with half a brain cell KNOWS that the jury made the wrong decision. Watching Philando Castile die on Facebook live, knowing that Tamir Rice's killers were still working like they did not kill a twelve-year-old boy. Then When They See Us came out and showed how police obtain convictions. And every day, the tide turned a little more. Let's not forget eight years of an Obama white house meant that the generation that is responsible for a lot of change, the K-Pop stans, the Parkland students, the little girl in Flint, the white girls challenging their parents, grew up knowing that a black president is just a thing that happens. And it all came to a head with this one death. Opportunity looks like it just sprang up and yet, every little thing contributed to it. 

Speaking of which, I saw this account on twitter complaining about how libraries always claim they don't have books by black authors in their roster and she knows they lying. So I replied that my books are available on Scribd, Overdrive. 

An hour later she got back to me about one of my books. Like fastest sale, read and book review I've ever had. So because she was looking for black authors, I had my books in online libraries, and I'm black, but had I not answered her post, the opportunity would not have come to the good end it did. 

So in order to take advantage of fate, there must be action. Positive, deliberate action that is met with appropriate REaction.

Expectations vs. Reality

I grew up Catholic and everything from school to home life taught me that people strove to be good and kind and fair so that they might one day get to heaven when they die. I assumed that adulthood and maturity were the same things. I assumed that everyone had common sense and thought logically. Well, you know what they say about assuming...(it makes an ass out of you and me). The reality is so much more different. Churches aren't about bringing out the best in people and all people want to know from God is..."What have you done for me lately?"

Africans are being sold as slaves in Libya. (What a segue way huh?) Now I haven't so much as read one of the articles or watched a clip; I've just seen the headlines on social media. Do they surprise me?
No.
Do you remember that Jada Pinkett Smith did a whole segment on CNN on human trafficking in America? About how kids as young as twelve years old were sold into prostitution by 'their boyfriends' a.k.a pimps. It all came down to these kids looking for love in all the wrong places and these predators willing to brainwash them into thinking they were getting it from them. Since their parents are never home anyway and they don't notice what happens in their kids' lives. Or they live with frail grandparents who it's all they can do to get up in the morning. When I think about it, I get so sad and just want to hug my boy close and let him know that he is loved.
I also saw another segment also on CNN about 'child brides' in India. I put the child brides in quotes because these girls were being 'married off' by their families and Catholic priests to men from Dubai and wherever; the men used the women for sex, rode them hard and put them away wet...and then abandoned them. Then they went home to their families and probably went through the whole thing all over again.
Modern-day slavery is alive and well.

This world is fucked up.
Most of these reports though look at the problem only through one lens. The lens of the predator coming, using their money and influence and getting to use human beings like tissue paper. Nobody examines the problems from the other side. What makes these girls submit to being degraded in return for this toxic 'love'? What makes families in India sell their children like livestock? Why are young men submitting to being sold as slaves in Libya?
What is the driving force behind this?
I know I know, nobody wants to be labeled a victim blamer, but I tell you true, unless you know what drives both sides, you're never going to solve the problem.
Maybe we don't want to solve the problem?
Maybe we're content, to be fake outraged on social media, and life goes on? After all don't we have enough personal problems? Who needs more shit on their plate right? No one that's who.
And what about these men? What is it that makes you see a child being exploited and it makes you hard as diamonds and wanting to despoil that child even further? Use them hard and leave them whimpering in pain and misery? Knowing that behind you are fifty more men who are going to use her just the same. And then all of you go home to your wives and kids and say, "Hey honey, how was your day? My meeting ran a little long. I'm so hungry, is there any of your delicious meatloaf left?"
See this is why I'm single.

Then there is the case of Cyntoia Brown. She was sixteen when she was trafficked by a pimp named cut throat. That was after being drugged and raped for days by those men above. Then she was sold to a 43 yr old child predator. She shot him dead and guess what? She's in jail, sentenced to 51 years. My young self would have been like, "Don't be ridiculous! No one in their right mind would do that!"
So, is the American justice system not in its right mind or are people just inherently without a moral compass or a smidgeon of compassion? It really boggles my mind how evil sons of bitches are. To think that she was alone in this, nobody helped her...my heart hurts.

I keep seeing this post on Twitter about Mansa Musa being the richest man on earth ever, with a net worth of 400billion. I don't remember when Mansa Musa lived or which village he was the chief of. That must have been primary school history which was a long time ago. What I definitely don't remember reading is that his village was also rich and prosperous. Perhaps he was just another leader who liked to accumulate wealth while his people languish in poverty. Nothing to celebrate in other words.
And if we're looking for the answer to slavery, I think we find it in poverty. No doubt Mansa Musa sold some of his 'less desirable' folk to the slavers. They were poor anyway, a burden on the village? Criminals? Weak minded? His enemies? Whatever the reason, I'm sure if I did my research, there'd be some people selling in there. Supply and demand. An endless supply of poverty-stricken individuals are just rich fodder waiting to be plundered by somebody.
A girl wanting to buy a new weave so she's more socially acceptable in her school circles; meets a man who says, "Hey, why don't I buy it for you? All I want is...a kiss in repayment. How about it?"
And that's how the devil offers you domain over everything you see.
"Just jump off this cliff for me, and it's all yours."
Dreams of a better life.
Food on your plate.

Whatever it is, you get offered it in return for...nothing that you'll miss anyway right?
Just your soul, your dignity, and your self-respect. You can't even see those. Very likely they don't even exist.
We have to do better.
We have to be better.
My mini romance story that won first prize, I believe you can read it in the post before this one, is about slavery. It's only alluded to because it was a romance competition not some literature thing that was looking for deep sad stories. It was one of the reasons I was sure they would throw it out. The girl is enslaved by one guy and won in a poker game by another. I was constrained by the word count, but if I had my way, she'd have run away from him too. Because even though he figured he was 'saving' her, the truth is that he just bought her manumission papers and if he so chooses, he could enslave her just as much as the guy he won her from. At the end of the day, we have to realize our own value and save ourselves.
Enough real-life horror. Go read some contrived horror here and here for November, which is horror month. Or allow me to buy you a copy by filling in the form.