Indifference ends

If you're making the choice to stay silent on this issue let me take what remains of my patience and generosity and say this to you:

Your silence can only be received as either support or indifference. If you're a supporter, I have no idea how you started following me-- maybe it was for the jokes. Well I don't do that anymore, now I just talk about race revolution and lifting weights. You'll find the unfriend button if you hover over my photo. So long, and I'll see you during the revolt.

Now if you're gonna claim indifference I'm gonna exhaust my generosity here and give you the benefit of doubt. I'm not going to think of you as a used condom full of diarrhea. I should, and by all rights I'd be justified in thinking of you that way; this isn't an issue you should want to be indifferent on. But I'm not gonna go in on you like that. Instead I'm going to think of you as a coward. That seems mean but I'm trying to reach out here, really I am, because I do get it.

It's scary and hard to take the steps away from apathy. Apathy is safe. Apathy means not feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, or frustrated. Apathy means not feeling hurt, or in despair, or weak or powerless. Apathy means being able to say "I really don't want to deal with that, oooh look, cat videos."

You won't find a single person of color who doesn't desperately want to be able to spend their time not worrying about race and racial violence and instead just watch videos of animals being funny and adorable. But being Black and in America means that not one of us has the option of indifference. I don't get to say "I'm not even looking at anything to do with Charleston, hey who's watching that series Sense8?" That's a luxury no Black person can afford. It's a privilege. A white privilege.

Yes, you have those--white privileges. Yes YOU. I know you may have had a life of difficulty and struggle, I'm not trying to diminish that. But the specter of "I might be killed just because I'm white" doesn't loom over you. You also have inherent biases.

Yes, all white people have inherent biases which propagate supremacy. All of you. If you think you don't have those biases it's because you step on the conveyor belt of your life and go through each day without really examining your thoughts and actions on the matter. And in that most simple of ways, you contribute to white supremacy. I know that's a scary fucking thought. I get it.

I'm a man who's a student of feminism, wherein I learned-- and continue to learn on a daily basis-- all about the inherent biases I have which propagate male supremacy. That's not fun. It sucks and it's scary to think of myself like that and it's terrifying to think of all the ways I've made life harder for other people. I don't want to think of myself that way nor do I want to be responsible for the oppression of other people. And it's because I don't want to think of myself like that, because I don't want to be responsible for that oppression, because I don't want to make life harder for others, I've committed myself to rooting out those toxic portions of myself. It's difficult, yes, exceedingly. But it's important and more to the point, it's necessary. So I don't cower from that task, I embrace it and try to change myself and others.

When you as a white person take on silence, take on indifference, you admit defeat to cowardice. You cower in the face of the important and vital work that needs doing. You fail not only to differentiate yourself from the Dylann Roof's and confederate flag wavers out here, but most importantly you fail to take on the task of dismantling the systems which create Dylann Roof.

And make no mistake, that is YOUR task. It's my task as well but it's definitively your task. If you are White and in America you are in the best position to help end white supremacy and it is your moral duty to do so. White people created White supremacy, White people still benefit from White supremacy, everyday. Yes, that means you.

And again I understand that it's scary. It's scary to see the words "white supremacy" attached to your name probably. It's definitely scary to think about all the people in your family and friends who you know that label applies to. I have no doubt whatsoever that it's terrifying to think about confronting those friends and family members and potentially losing them from your life. Scary, definitely. I charge you with the task of doing it nonetheless.

I do that to help you, all of us really. Because the first and most meaningful act of revolt is to take away people's indifference. So now you no longer get to sit on the sidelines. You now have to make a choice: do you want white supremacists and the benefits of white supremacy in your life, no matter how many more churches are shot up, no matter the cost in lives...or do you want to stand, truly, righteously, on the side of freedom and equality to create a world where a generation of people will truly, never experience this shit outside of reading about it in a book?

This is a test of your character. It takes nothing for you to ignore this; continue to pretend blindness, go click on another cat video and I'll see you during the revolt.

It requires everything you are to step into the fight. Not for kudos or like/fav/shares or gentle fuckings or whatever. Don't do it for the optics of how it makes you look. But if you believe in a world free of supremacy, if you truly believe that days like yesterday and today never have to happen again, if you believe in freedom and equality for all not just as buzz-words or meaningless recitations, then stand up. Throw away your silence and your indifference and be willing to march, scream, fight, loose friends and family, risk jail, jesus christ just fucking FEEL even when it sucks and the struggle makes you feel depressed and exhausted and frustrated and angry.

If you're willing to do that then we're waiting for you, join us.
Because, and this is the part you really have to pay attention to, we need you. We need your help.

Understand that America is a fucking Medusa with snakes reaching out in many forms of systemic racism and the only way to defeat this shit is to cut off the head and show it to itself. White supremacy is not going to dismantle itself and our voices alone aren't going to bring about the necessary change. We know, we've tried that in the past and it didn't work. Your whiteness lends a power and credibility to your voice that we simply aren't afforded. We need the power of your voices to speak to those people who steadfastly refuse to hear us.

People like fucking Nikki Haley​ who even now refuse to listen to us even on simple solution issues like TAKING DOWN THE FUCKING CONFEDERATE FLAG outside the South Carolina Statehouse. Black voices don't get through to her. Yours will.

It's time to step up. We aren't even at the revolution, these are the beginnings of the revolt. Choose your side, and I hope to see you standing next to me on the front lines whatever and wherever they may end up being, but get off the fucking bench.

Je suis Charlie? Je ne suis pa Charlie

An open letter to Charlie Hebdo and all the rest of you fucking Charlies

Dear Charlies,

Some things people are probably real fucking tired of:

They are tired of smiling at you

They are tired of shaking hands with you

They are tired of fucking talking to you

They are tired of being fucking nice with you

Because this is 2015 and you act like racism and systemic oppression are new, unheard of, imaginary, or inconsequential. You act like there is not a long and brutal history of their oppression, at your hands. You call them savages, when, in the bitterest irony, your history of violent torture-murder campaigns against these people can only, with any modicum of honesty, be classified as howling savage barbarity. You insulate yourselves from any real criticism, minds constantly working like digestive systems to filter out any speck, any element of truth which might upset your fragile worldview. You are ignorant of the history of your own oppressive actions and when this history is pointed out to you, you again act as though history has no relevance. And then, when from out of the cinders and black smoke you left in your wake, a boogeyman arises who claps you the fuck up, you have the nerve to act surprised.

Fuck Charlie Hebdo and fuck every one of you Charlies.

Charlie Hebdo is a racist publication. That’s what it is, let’s not pretend that they were anything more than that, just because they, like all curmudgeonly racist publications, were also mad about other shit. Let’s not pretend that there’s some haughty French sophistication that elevated them out of shit-stinking racism. Yes, comparing the kidnapped sex slave girls of Boko Haram to welfare queens is satire, it’s fucking racist satire. That it’s satire doesn’t erase the racism. You sitting around posting “je susis charlie” is no fucking different from you posting “je susis David Duke” except that Charlie Hebdo is a weekly magazine and I imagine Duke prints his white power news bulletins at the end of the month so as to cause less conflict with his annual neo-nazi bake sale and interracial porn swap party.

"W-w-w-wait a m-m-minute now, it's not racism uh uh because satire" you stutter out like Jimmy Stewart on prescription grade obtuseness.

Satirical racism still employs racism. If you ironically call me a nigger, you've still just called me a nigger.
If you call me nigger as a means of making fun of someone else for calling me a nigger, you've still called me a fucking nigger. This is where your intent falls apart. Because it doesn't matter what you mean in your heart or whatever, it matters that you still employed racist bigoted methodology as means of making your point. You don't get a free pass on that, you don't get to be racist with impunity simply because you actually meant well.
"I don't mean it like that man" is the defense you're trying to mount here and if you truly don't mean it, then stop fucking saying it like that.

Charlie Hebdo creates racist islamophobic shit. There are infinite other means available to them of making their points, but they choose to use the most denigrating. In doing so they became no different than their alleged targets. They actively added to the vast wealth of racist depictions and in doing so they tangibly made these people's lives worse.

This is where you'll inevitably start to condescend. "You don't understand satire" is the response your brain will form like a shit to drop from your lips. People understand satire just fine, it's you who possesses a superficial understanding of racism.

Because your white voice doesn't belong everywhere. Your white voice is not needed everywhere. Your white voice is not wanted everywhere. Your white voice is wholly fucking inappropriate in many arenas. A bunch of insulated white men punching everywhere still results in privileged white people punching the already oppressed. Simply stated, YOU had no fucking business making that particular satire. This is like donning black-face as a means of protesting black-face and then getting indignant when people rightly tell you to get the fuck out of black-face you fucking asshole. Then you come with the most lame-brained "my racism isn't racist" hot takes.

“B-b-b-but awhatabouta-ah-ah-ah we gotta be able to uh-uh commit sacrilege and-ah-ah offend people b-becau-“

Shut your fucktoothed moral-halitosis stankbank you insufferable cock drip. That is semantically indistinguishable from the post 9/11 “They hate us 4 r freedoms” bullshit.  This is the apotheosis of white whine. The people in this world who truly hate you for your freedom constitute such a miniscule portion of the population that they can be ruled damn near non-existent and absolutely aberrant, characteristic only of the fact that there have been and always will exist assholes in every society.

This is not to say that growing extremism isn’t a thing. It is. And it is a matter of savagery; it’s a matter of your savagery. You are creating these people. Extremism is growing because of your fucking deplorable actions. If you want to decrease extremism, stop fucking with other people’s countries, stop oppressing these people in your own nation, stop mocking them as they stand in the rubble of the shit you destroyed, and I guaran-fucking-tee you, you will see a decline in fucking extremism.

Let me put this in bold so I don’t have to repeat it.

THIS IS NOT SAYING THAT MOST MUSLIMS SECRETLY APPLAUD WHAT HAPPENED. THIS IS ABOUT EXTREMISM. THE VAST OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF MUSLIMS ABHOR THESE PEOPLE.

But if we’re going to talk about extremism then let’s talk about it clearly and honestly. I could have aptly titled this article “How to tell a true terrorist ghost story” and it would simply go:

First you take a people’s homes and then you destroy those homes in war; when they are driven to your nation your response is “go back to the rubble we left you”; mandate that schools teach a positive view of the colonialist horror you perpetrated on them; pass all measure of denigrating laws against them and then mock them to their faces. Now you’re the monster of the story. Then one day, after all the devastation you’ve left, something comes back from the past, something all howling vengeance and teeth and force. While you’re sleeping it grips you in some of your most tender places and its teeth sink in and start to tear flesh.

And the truth then is not that these gunmen simply killed 12 people because they hated the freedom of press and expression. The truth is that some people from a group you have stepped on, kicked, beaten, raped, pissed on, murdered, and all but outlawed the very existence of, got pissed off with your mockery and given everything else that’s happened, given that they’ve been screaming for you to listen to them for decades now, they learned that with you, talk don’t mean shit, so they gave you a black-eye. And then you flood the streets crying about how awful it is.

Yes, it’s awful that 12 people had their lives taken from them. These are their names.

Frederic Boisseau

Stéphane Charbonnier

Jean Cabut

Philippe Honoré

Bernard Verlhac

Georges Wolinski

Bernard Maris

Michel Renaud

Elsa Cayat

Mustapha Ourrad

Ahmed Merabet

Franck Brinsolaro

Remember them. Remember that they had their lives taken.

They were human beings. They were co-owners and agents of a barbaric racist oppressive system. Neither of those statements diminishes the other.

I’m gonna pause here to point something out to you. The first name on that list is Frederic Boisseau. I put him there first because Frederic Boisseau was the maintenance man and it was his first day of work in that building. He left behind two children, aged 10 and 12.

I mourn the loss of human life. I don’t believe in collateral damage, every life matters. The taking of any life is tragic. The taking of Frederic Boisseau’s life is tragic. Made all the more so because he wasn’t even part of this shit.

But make no mistake, this is what happens when you try to eradicate a people through colonialist atrocity. Because you switched tactics from militarism to mercantilism doesn’t mean the entirety of the enterprise isn’t still colonialist in nature. People resist that shit. And eventually after so much time and so much talking, pleading, begging, urging, screaming, eventually some people stop talking all together and you all start to look like righteous targets for revolutionary action. These people burned Paris trying to get that message across to you and you still didn't listen.

That’s not something I condone. That’s something I desperately want to avoid. But let’s not pretend that it comes from any other place than furious people who are sick and fucking tired of not having a goddamn voice.

And while you rev up your nasal white whine machine to tell me about the right to offend, let me stop and break it down for you like a package real quick.

You have a shallow understanding offense. You have a voice. Part of that voice is Charlie Hebdo. And that voice allows you to strike back, strike out, at all those things which you take offense to, even when what you take offense to is another people’s existence. You have a voice and that voice can inflict real damage.

Being offended as a white cartoonist with immediate access to 45,000 voices is a far fucking position from being oppressed, offended, and voiceless. What you call being a offended is really just you having your feelings hurt. You might feel a little spicy about some of the things Charlie Hebdo printed, but the actual impact on your life is nil.

These people are taking offense in the word's root definition.Offense, from the Latin Offendere literally: to strike against. Charlie Hebdo printed shit that actively made their lives worse. It pushed/gained support for anti-Islamic legislation, it increased the level of already rampant Islamophobia. These people are striking out against you and your colonialist supremacism, only they don’t have the voice you have so recently some of them picked up guns to make their voices louder.

Again, I don’t condone that. But it’s absolutely understandable how they arrived at that point. Because here’s another thing that people are fucking sick and tired of: you thinking that they’re too stupid to know that you’re being racist. It’s not veiled Islamophobia, it’s just Islamophobia. They can see it, and so can everyone else.

People are sick and tired of you acting like you own the goddamn world. People are sick and tired of you thinking that they’re inferior and don’t have a right to exist. People are sick and fucking tired of you being surprised when someone hauls off and slaps the ever living piss out of you for attempting to enforce such toxic beliefs.

But hey, we’re all entitled to our offensive views. Dope, I agree. Truly I do, because here’s mine.

Minus Frederic Boisseau, and possibly the two cops, depending on whether or not they were previously out nightsticking (or whatever the fuck the French word for truncheon is) some poor or poor person of color, those shot up bastards got what they had coming to them. That’s not to say they deserved it, but they are equally responsible for creating the monster that ate them, and if it wasn’t those specific gunmen, it was gonna be somebody else out here that was sick of their shit.

Again, I’m not condoning or promoting that action. I am saying you are ultimately responsible for this shit. When you go around the world and kick down people’s doors and break all their shit and punch their wives and rape their kids and piss on the dog on your way out, eventually you will meet people who have something to say about it, only they won’t be interested in just saying it anymore.

Actions are the loudest voice any of us have, and your actions clearly say “je susis Charlie” or “I’m a fucking barbaric racist.”

People are fucking sick and tired of you Charlie.