I hate meetings before 10:00 as they stifle my morning moments – yet at this risk of being late, I had to write these words that came so demanding in my twilight dreams and so clearly in between yoga poses.
Recalling Thomas Jefferson’s words of “what to do with the Negro?” in Notes on the State of Virginia I understand that there will always be a certain set number of people who since the kindling of the idea to create the perfect union where European paupers could become kings of their own plantations; and whom are so deeply wounded with moral injury of consciousness from kidnapping, trafficking, raping, killing, and enslaving fellow human beings – Biblical descendants of Ham- that their collective unconscious refuses to see today’s Black person in skins of a radiant hues from honey-milk to copper brown to royal purple and indigo black – as human.
From a dream of the white gaze
To them I say – be free. Stop obsessing over our Blackness allowing us to live rent free in your mind, dreams, ambitions, and fears. Free yourselves and enjoy your all-inclusive segregated ecosystems of people who look like you – your neighborhoods, schools, restaurants, stores, travel clubs and golf courses, board rooms and state rooms. Live in your gated communities. Love who you love. Measure your own merit and achievement on your own standards of those who are like you. Collect your own taxes and profits from one another or not. Hire those whom you trust. Speak freely without fear of cancellation. Continue to vote for candidates who think like you and dare to be governed by them.
In short – live your life in the ideal world of your imagination without waiting for us to disappear. Take all of this and be free at the simple cost of forgetting that we exist and NEVER speaking of us again. No policies, practices, violent encounters, jujitsu words, selling/marketing, listening to our music nor adapting our dances and rhythms, praying to our gods, stealing our medicines, spying on our innovations, stealing or poisoning our lands, entering our communities, raping our women and children, incarcerating our men, or collecting income of any sorts from us.
Be you. Because thankfully, you are actually a minority. The rest of the world, including many who look like you, live in a higher consciousness of a world of abundance and divine intellect built on a web of belonging where everyone and being of the animal and natural world – have a contribution to make, and it is our interdependence – not just our diversity, that makes us stronger. Stop fighting. Stop jarring with words. Stop the violence. Simply Be. Be free.
Alisa's thoughts on Beloved Communities 