"But what does any truth set free look like? I know that I don’t know..."

These are some of the most powerful words I have read in recent days, months.. ever, and I ask you to take a few moments to read them. Because, in the wake of Charleston -- in the wake of being a citizen in this country. In the wake of being a human being with ears on our heads and eyes in our faces, it is the least we can do. Black, white, southern, northern, Christian, Jewish, Liberal, Conservative, HUMAN. We cannot move forward as a people without recognizing what and who and how we hold back.

We will lament the numbers of folks killed in mass murders in the United States. There’s a number for that. We will talk about the numbers of people killed in black-on-black murder. There’s a number for that. We will never talk about the number of unemployed and underemployed hard-working black folks living in poverty. We will never talk about the numbers of black folk in prison for the kinds of nonviolent drug-related offenses my white students commit every weekend. We will never talk about the number of human beings killed by young American military men and women draped in camouflage, or the number of human beings murdered by drones across the world. We will never talk about the specific amount of money this country really owes Grandma and her friends for their decades of unpaid labor. We will never talk about the moral and monetary debt accrued by the architects of this Empire. There are shameful numbers for all of that, too...
Please read the piece in its entirety. And heartbreaking. And maddening. And difficult to digest. And important. Thank you, Kiese Laymon for writing it. 

GGC


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