Fuel It: This #BLM wave is different

I love conspiracy theories. For however much grain of truth salt they hold, I find the untetheredness exhilarating. Truth in a way cages me. I am loyal to it, guided by it but often find myself staying within it’s four walls. Really two walls since north and south are infinite poles of truth.

I digress. Over the past few days, I have considered more deeply the possible reality that the recent #BlackLivesMatter movement is another political stunt.

Logically, it makes perfect sense. In the realm of untetheredness, it’s ripe possibility to sink the teeth of my mind into.

In Trump, you have a bonafide racist that, in his usual perplexion and by some accounts, has done more for black people than even our very own Barack. Again, I am not speaking caged by truth and whatever version of facts is true. At the very minimum though, Trump has touted his achievements for minorities more often than Obama admitted publicly to being black verbally.

In a sense, you can make the argument that if by merely speaking so often about it that Trump spends more time thinking about how to make blacks win than Obama did. In politics, it doesn’t matter what it is true. It matters what gets conveyed. What gets sold and more importantly what gets bought. And what we buy becomes ’truth’.

For the Democrats to win, they need a candidate that can sweep the black vote and Biden began his message by resonating strongly with us until we remember that he was part of the same administration that in messaging at least did less than a sitting black president.

*Conspiracy Theories enters the chat* Naturally, this becomes a ripe bed to attack Trump by simply revealing who he is, a racist. That is the working logical model of how we got here. The conspiracy version of why black lives do not matter right in the middle of #blacklivesmatter. We are once again designated pawns to shift power between one white man or the other.

The fundamental reality is that whoever wins in November, we are choosing between a closet racist or a bold racist. No black life is winning here.

Before you make my conclusion for me, however, I actually believe conspiracy theorist or not, this movement feels different. This movement feels like when an elastic band has been stretched one too many times and it finally snapped. This movement feels like the preamble and the backdrop of covid-19 created a different attitude, a different cause, a different vibe.

For the first time in my adult life, I see children, white children raised differently asking different questions of their parents. I see white people admitting to being racist. I see white people sharing what they are using to educate themselves. I see white people being open and honest about the truth. I see white people joining the conversation and creating space, holding space for black people to vent sometimes even at them. We are doing this not in isolation but at scale.

This movement is different. I don’t know when it will end, I don’t know how much change it will bring but I see some complete tattoos and it has blackness all over it.

To the white person still afraid to admit to themselves that they are racist. Do it. We already know you are. Don’t be that guy that likes guys and everyone knows but keeps buying his girlfriend the latest car because that is the only thing he has to offer. Come on out from your closest. We won’t lynch you. We are combing the streets looking for true allies and the gateway to the real movement is your self reflection.

To the any human, let’s fuel this movement. Let’s not quit. Let’s not stop. Let’s not drink the kool-aid that it will pass. It might but before, change your heart. Repent if you need to. Bare your nakedness, our racism is already a porn show. If our hope is a political change, we have lost. It is why it must be a foundational collective appetite change. We must want different, be different, demand different. Then we’ll get it.

I don’t care what is conspiracy or true. Truth becomes what we buy. Let’s rewrite history by snapping into a different conclusion this time than wherever this movement was expected to conclude. If you judged life the same way you judged this article, you would expect it to end with a vote for Ben Carson. I bet on you instead. Fuel it.