2022 Kujichagulia

 2nd day of Kwanzaa: Kujichagulia. Self-determination. When your body, hair, voice, facial expressions, and history are policed by others it is hard to be a self-determining ppl. It's so easy for your culture to be defined by its relation to the policers. In the American arts we see the results of this 'white adjacent' POC movement in which there must must MUST be somewhere pleasing for white ppl to look. Failure to offer a pillow for the ruling caste is seen as a technical error rather than an artistic choice to push a coddled audience toward empathy. Often the rewards go to the best pillowmakers for white fragility. And that success drives envy and frustration that can invert themselves into self-hatred, as one wants to become like the police. The power, the success, the gaze of the caste is intoxicating like a sweet smelling poison. Some people drink the poison to kill that part that they hate, the part that they see as policed, beaten, ugly, and hopeless. 

Some people put aside the poison to create their own elixir that is often ridiculed or -even worse- accused of reverse discrimination against white ppl. HBCUs were created as a safe space for Black education, so of course it makes sense that for the last 40 yrs they have faced lawsuits for reverse discrimination against whites, terrorist attacks by white militias, as well as underfunding. 

Any attempt at self-determination is a threat to the caste system. Black Wall Street isn't just a bygone era but a historical pattern that repeats itself when ppl try to be self-determining. The policing caste will at first ignore the efforts and then lie before switching tactics to ridicule. When that doesn't work they will try to destroy, and then hide the history of the atrocity for self-determining blk ppl. And when that fails they appropriate. Self determination is the ultimate revolutionary act against...self hatred. Ancestors continued to rebuild, redefine, and and grow. When you go abroad it is clear: American culture IS Black culture. It is the most intoxicating, successful, wide-selling, fast-spreading potion sold around the world of American life. The thing that was destroyed is co-opted. And yet we march on. We continue to self-define, self-determine, self-create, regardless of the bombs, lawsuits, jeers, and swagger jacking of the police class. Continue to self-determine and look inside of you for what you love. Kujichagulia.