License to Kill

people's hearts, around this bullshit sense of fear. I feared for my life line that white people get to use so recklessly as a way to give them license to kill. And for the entirety of Monday, my feed began to fill with the story of Ralph Yarl and I refused to look at it. All I kept seeing was the picture of him in band and the picture of him with his two little brothers that just kept going, going, going, filling my feed, and I just my heart just couldn't

take it right. It couldn't take it. After the shooting in Kentucky, It couldn't take it. After the shooting in Tennessee and all of the shootings that have happened in between, and the shooting that just happened at the Alabama sweet sixteen, I just didn't want to know. And then finally, of course, because part of my work is also being on social media,

I couldn't avoid it. And it's going to be very hard for me to make it through this episode and not cry, because that's what I've been doing for the last few days. And yes, thankfully Ralph is alive by virtue of him fleeing on the doorstep of this eighty five year old bigot and having to knock on that one, not two, but three doors, and then finally on the third door, be told as he is bleeding out from his head and from his arm, to get down on the ground and put his hands up, and then finally

he passed out. Because even a bleeding, wounded black child was still seen as a threat to this white neighborhood. And this story has just undone me because I just can't imagine the fear that he had. I can't imagine the fear that this black child will live with for the rest of his life knowing that all he did wrong was happen upon the wrong address and ring the doorbell.

And there are too many stories where where black people have had broken down cars and they ask for help and they end up dead where they've been in their own homes, but a white person stumbled in and shot them dead. Where they're playing on the playground with a fake gun and are shot dead. But white children who were just recently allowed to go to the NRA convention and pick up and quote unquote play with real guns. That's scene as cute that scene as look at that

young patriot in training. What I see is a white domestic terrorist in training, because when you recognize that you live in a country where white boys can pose with AR fifteen means handguns, rifles, all of these things, and black children can't ask for help, holding no weapon at all except living inside of their black skin. Don't come out your mouth telling me that this is somebody's free country, this is somebody's democratic nation. This nation is bullshit. This

country is bullshit. It ain't free for nobody except for white men and the white women who uphold patriarchy and racism right alongside them, even though they have their fucking wounds and shackles. This story is like way too many stories. It's Elijah's story, it's Trayvon's story, it's Tamers's story, it's Ranetia's story, it's Sandra's story, it's Georgia's story, it's you know, on and on and on and on and on. You see, the sad thing is is that I'm not surprised. What

I am is weary with grief. My girlfriend the other day said to me that I need to quit my job, that following the news, being a political analyst, being a podcaster is weighing on me way too much, and that she is finding me in tears, she is finding me too deflated and depressed, moving through sleepless nights, and said, I think you need to leave your job, and I think that you need to seriously consider it. And I will tell you that I was at first just appalled.

Right now, I'm not equating what it is that I do, But there are other jobs that are much harder, right, much more taxing. Think about anyone who was in the medical profession during the height of COVID, and I'm certain, obviously we know the numbers that many people did quit and leave right because their own lives were on the line as they're trying to save other people. But I think about one of the doctors in Tennessee who said,

I'm tired. I'm not a politician, but I can tell you that I'm tired of treating bodies riddled with bullets. I'm tired of these mass shootings because there are doctors and nurses and health practitioners that are leaving their profession because of the weight, the exhaustion and the trauma. Right there are teachers that are leaving the classroom because of

the weight, the trauma, and the exhaustion. When I think about myself and the last is it fifteen years almost in twenty years in policy and politics and media, you know, it wasn't always like this. That's the thing, right, is that I can look back and see where everything took a fucking nose dive. And you know, I got into podcasting in relatively the twenty tens, right because at the time, marriage equality was not the law of the land, and there were just way too many things that were starting

to happen. And one of the segments that I used to do on my former show, my first podcast, Pallatini, was called the you know the new normal? Is this the new normal? That was the question that the segment asked.

All the time, this is twenty tents. You know, we had Barack Obama in the White House, we had marriage equality was starting to you know, dot the States and were pushing for a national you know, marriage equality and recognition, and seemingly things felt like they were moving in the right direction, but there was still this underlying fear hatred

of the other. And at the time it was highly directed at the queer community, always directed at the black community, let me be clear, but it was really directed at the queer community in terms of national headlines because of the audacity for queer people to say that they wanted to be able to marry, that the stories of being denied access to a loved one in a hospital, being denied you know, the ability to pass your wealth down your homes or what have you, being beaten, right, and

we were juxtaposing that with stories that were coming out of African nations and LATINX nations where people were being literally criminalized. Fast forward to the whitelash, to Barack Obama being Donald Trump, and twenty sixteen to now has been a never ending onslaught of racism, anti semitism, anti Asian hate, anti blackness, homophobia, transphobia, I mean, you name it, islamophobia, misogyny, I mean, you name it and it. There are examples

from each and every hour of the day. Right there is there is not enough coverage right of all of the incidents that happen. But boy, when you sit down and you start to look at the national headlines and the state headlines and city papers and local papers, it makes you not want to leave your house because I got to tell you that I don't feel safe anywhere. Right.

I have moments when I am doing my best to focus on joy and beauty and you know, being outside and being in nature and all of these important things. But most days I kind of just want to run out of my front door and fucking scream, you know, like I want to break. I tweeted yesterday and said, you know, I just want to call in black like I am tired, I am My body hurts, my eyes are puffy from the tears that just readily flow down

my face. You know, I can tell you a story of being in my master's program many many years ago and talking about the fact that this is when I was still married and thinking about having kids, and said out loud for the first time that I was terrified to give birth to a black boy because I didn't know if they were gonna make it, because this country sure as hell has made sure that too many black boys don't make it. You know, I just saw a true historical accounting of the fact that white people used

to go alligator hunting with black babies. That is a true story. The violence and the brutality and the dehumanization of just the disregard for fucking life that is embedded, ingrained into the core of this country. Why did that man shoot through his door at a black child and

before shooting him said don't come around here again. Because he had been taught from the beginning of time that black lives do not matter, been force fed through Fox News, through policies by Republicans and Democrats, that black people are nothing but thugs, welfare queens, lazy, uneducated criminals just looking up rob and hurt black white women and white men.

That's why you have all these bullshit stand your ground laws, because once black people were no longer enslaved and it wasn't legal for you, do you know, rape and beat and terrorize and throw their babies into the marshes to go fish for fucking alligators. That once it was like, oh oops, our bad maybe they are people after all and not just chattel. But just to make sure you have the right to shoot a black person on the scene, on the spot, that all you gotta do is throw

up your white hands and say, ah, fear for my life. Oh, she's so angry, he's so tall, they're so scary, don't you worry. Mainstream media society will wrap their white arms around you and say, oh, poor you, You must have been threatened. You must have been so scared. You should have never had to come face to face with that black body. That's why you see that white murderers get their full resumes printed out before they're ever called a criminal or thug or terrorists. Oh but they liked music,

they were star volleyball player. Doesn't matter that they took out an entire supermarket filled with black people. Doesn't matter that they shot up an entire church of black people in the midst of prayer, right, because we all know that black skin is scarier than an ar fifteen. So I find myself weary, weary with grief and wondering whether

or not my girlfriend is right. Because there are days like the past few and weeks like the past, several and years like the last seven where all I see are things getting worse and rapidly so, and wondering if this isn't one of the moments where you're like, do I save myself or do you keep fighting for our country that doesn't want you, that doesn't see you, that

doesn't care about you, that doesn't believe you. I don't know, but what I do know is that Ralph Yarol shouldn't have had to find his way to three different houses to get help. He shouldn't be recovering at home from a gunshot wound to his head and his arm and probably a tragically broken spirit. It just, you know, this is America, and this has always been America. America has always hated black people because unless we are working in

servitude to whiteness, we are worthless, we are disposable. And some days I'm just tired and all I can muster is an exhausted tweet, a weary voiced episode, and just I don't know where we're going, folks, And you know, and I apologize because this is one of those weeks where I hope that by the end I can find some hopefulness, that I can find some strength. But today all I can think about is all of the ralph

yars that we don't know about. All I can think about is just this blood soaked soil that we call a country, even the oceans that we swim in, the beaches that we go to, or just marine cemeteries for black bodies. So when people ask what can they do, I don't know. Do something. Call your politicians, organize a walk out, run for office, do something. Because black people are tired. I'm tired. That is it for me today. Dear friends on wokf as always power to the people

and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.