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Fight the Power

I was about six or seven lines in and the area had a brown-out. A transformer popped, as is the case a lot around here during the summer. I switched gears on what I was going to write about. Going to be hot today. Reminds me of Do The Right Thing. Timely. I was thinking about the protests last night. Metaphors and analogies. A sip of strong, black, iced coffee triggered these thoughts. I used to drink it with milk. I'd watch as the milked spread out in thin strands, expanding, eventually changing the main ingredient into something very different. Softer, less bitter, but, not coffee anymore. I view our opinions as to the milk, different varieties of creamer. A dilution of the product. I often wonder if people like coffee or the idea of coffee. Sweetened, almost pale, tasting nothing like the original product. The mass marketing of the two worst coffees you'll ever taste, praised by the same people who think they understand coffee. This is how I view our current climate. White people, thinking they understand racism, how to fight it, meanwhile not evening asking black people what they want or how to help. I've asked. The answers vary, but sound nothing like the drum millennials and college kids are posting on social media. Social media: A conservative think tank masked as free speech. They throw out words like sheep, yet they are the shepherd. The coffee has become the Kool-Aid, both literally and figuratively. How can we say enjoy something we cannot taste? How can we help people we aren't asking the problem? Systemic. Police run to 911 calls and often think the caller is the perpetrator. Are we any better? Running to make our signs, to post on social media, to tell black people we have their backs, but immediately standing in front. A sea of white faces chanting black lives matter. The frenzied boredom drowning out the voices that need to be heard. "Say their names," yet they don't even know their representatives. Meanwhile, the people they are helping have been saying their names since Emmitt Till, Lamar Smith, Medgar Evers, Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins. 
We say the names of the dead, but have done nothing in 50 years to make sure this list ceases to grow. How can we help? What can we do? We need to ask and not allow our whiteness to dilute the message.
Back to Do the Right Thing. Remember the song? Fight the Power!
"Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamp." - 1989
2020 - People arguing and delaying the image of Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill
Until we realize we're the power, we're not helping. 

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