The Matrix of White Supremacy

what happened yesterday. Yesterday news report comes out and Jen Saki talked about it in the White House briefing that Joe Biden is potentially making a trip to Saudi Arabia to go and sit with MBS Mohammed bin Salam. You know, the murderer, the murderer, the man who murdered Jamal Kashogi, cut up his body into multiple pieces, and whose family still was just able to bury why an empty casket.

So Joe Biden finds himself after referring to Saudi Arabia as a pariah after you know, the Trump administration doing nothing about the murder of Jamal Kashogi because we know that MBS's friends and besties and WhatsApp text message buddies with who exactly. Jared Kushner. So here's the thing that got me. Why is Joe Biden making this trip to the Middle East potentially, well, because he needs to go shuck and jive in order to get some oil, because

our gas prices are skyrocketing. Right And you know, while folks want to attribute this to what is being done in Russia by cutting off Russian oil, understand that America does not get a most of its oil from Russia.

You would think that right now, dear friends, would be an opportunity for us to consider putting what is that piece of legislation, Oh, that's right, the Green New Deal back on the table as a way for us to actually start to forecast into the future our future needs as a country, which is around sustainability and renewable energy, not continuing to dig into the ground for a depleting asset that is now skyrocketing and why people go to fucking war. So, folks, here's where I am with this.

The Green New Deal, if you all remember, was trashed by none other than guess who, our friend, Senator Joe Mansion, King Cole. Why did he trash the brand new Deal? Well, because he's King Cole, and the dirtier our oil reserves can be the more money that he gets in his pockets from his lobbyist friends that want to keep pushing

coal and keep pushing oil. The reality is this, we are running out of that energy source, which is why we have turned into innovative renewable energies like wind, like solar.

And you would think that instead of continuing to put our money energy into things that are depleting, and we could look at the situation that is unfolding right now in Russia and the fact that they are the second largest oil producer two countries in the Middle East, and they have the ability to either turn the faucet on or turn it off depending on who they like and what they want at that time. So this is an opportunity for us to start to be investing in renewable

energies in a way that we haven't. And it's a because of what money in politics. It's because of big oil and big coal that are continuing to put money in the pockets of folks like Joe Mansion right and many others who decide to put our future needs ahead

of their present desires to be rich. Right, that's the situation, and so here we now have Joe Biden going hat in hand to the Saudi Kingdom to bow before a murderer, right, somebody who does not believe in democracy, who does not believe in accountability, who loves to be as chummy as possible with America's own fascist regime, who will come back to power in just a handful of months. And we're

not thinking outside of the box now. Folks will say to me, well, Danielle, we are in a state of crisis, so we have to deal with the crisis at hand and then we can think to the future. Folks, this is the same rope a dope that motherfucker's have been telling us every single time there is a mass shooting, every single time that there is a killing in the streets of an unarmed black person, it's never the time in that moment to deal with the issue at hand.

We're either told that we're playing Paul. We're told that it's not about race. We're told, oh no, we can't talk about renewable energies because we have to deal with the immediate oil crisis and the crisis at the pump. When is going to be the right time, When is there going to be an opportunity for us as a nation to say that what we've been doing and what we've been relying on is no longer working. So what

comes next. My fear with this administration, which has been my fear before Biden became President of the United States, it was when Biden was candidate Biden that he was at that time not my number one, two, or third choice to be president of the United States. He was my number five. And why was that? It's because I believe that Joe Biden, while a good person, right, with good character, all well and fine, but I believe that he is a man. He is a politician from a

long forgotten past. And how do I know that? Because when Joe Biden became President of the United States, he thought that, by virtue of his whiteness and the last forty years that he had spent in the Senate, that he was going to be able to sit down with the folks like Mitch McConnell, right, and just hash it out over a stake dinner America's future, not recognizing that that Republican Party that he had grown up with no

longer exists. They're a motherfucking cult. And so here's Joe Biden instead of coming out of the gate pushing voting rights and voting rights alone as a way to secure our democracy from our homegrown fascists that are trying to move us in the direction of the Putins of the world. Instead of doing that, what did Joe Biden find himself doing, Oh, bipartisanship. Bipartisanship.

We're going to pass an infrastructure bill so that I can show America and the world that I can work with people who literally try to hang their Vice resident on the steps of the Capitol. It makes no sense

and it makes no sense for us. Instead of putting together, I don't know, an emergency task force, instead of saying that while we are dealing with this immediate crisis, this administration is going to be putting billions or tens of millions or hundreds of millions, you know, maybe taking that surplus that the Pentagon did not ask for in their budget and putting it into renewable energy and clean energy resources that are woefully underfunded, so that at some point

America can start acting like it is in the twenty first century. Instead of operating like the good guy from Scranton who still believes that there's a bunch of folks going to work at construction sites with hard hats and a hard lunch pail. Folks, we have got to find a way for us to be able to move forward. And this move to Saudi Arabia, it ain't fucking it. It is not it. And what is troubling me. What is troubling me is that one it shows that America

is in a desperate situation. Right. Desperation is never how you go into a negotiation. That's just plain facts. With whether you're talking to your partner, your spouse, your child, your boss, Desperation is never the way to go into a negotiation. But America is desperate because you are seeing gas prices around the country that are at four five, six, seven eight dollars. I saw in certain areas, and of

course those are the insane price gougers. But here, folks, if we had been making a push, an actual push, to renewable energy, to electric cars, to investing in our future, we wouldn't still be dealing with the dictators from our fucking past. All of these things are connected and they drive me insane because I feel as if when I saw that headline that I'm like, oh, Biden is not

set up for this time. He is not set up for this moment right, because I am finding that this administration, while they have very good intentions and I believe are filled with some really good people, are still believing in the better angels of the demons that they are facing each and every single day, which brings me to the

world of Disney. So another story that came out this week, and I got to tell you remember a couple of weeks ago on Woke Wednesday, when I said, do you know that the biggest evil that is leading the way in our culture war and our political war and the fight for our democracy is money in politics? And what I said during that work Wednesday is that you have companies, right, and moguls who give money to both sides of the aisle. They give money to Democrats and they give money to Republicans.

So why so that they always have somebody that is going to be in their pocket, right, And so you can't just give money to one side because our pendulum political pendulum, swings back and forth, back and forth. So come to find out that after death Scantists passes the Don't Say Gay legislation that Disney one of the biggest,

biggest employers in Florida was mum silent on the topic. Right, So the heiress of Disney comes out and calls out the company for not taking a stand that Disney is supposed to be, you know, the most accepting, loving, fun loving place on earth, and that should be for all people, right,

regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Well, now, after they have been called out publicly, come to find out that their tepid response is this that they give money to both sides of the aisle, and they are not behind any one piece of legislation, but that as a whole, yes, they do support politicians, Republicans and Democrats who are on differing sides of the issue. What that boils down to is, I want to have my cake

and eat it too. I don't want to offend anyone who is in charge, and so I'm just going to spread out my money and hope that you all don't pay attention to who I'm giving my resources too. Then they want it to come out and tout the fact that this multibillion dollar industry, this multi billion dollar company,

gave three million dollars to LGBT organizations. So what we should just shut the fuck up then, because Disney, a multi billion dollar organization, gave three billion and three excuse me, three million within m spread across how many lgbt Q organizations And does that counter out the millions, right, the tens of millions that you gave out to Democrats and

Republican politicians. You know, folks, Sometimes I just I want things to make sense, and I realize that the more that you pay attention, the less sense at all actually makes. And I find this really frustrating, right because we as people are supposed to matter. Our voice and our vote is host to be more valuable and more important than companies and corporations. But that can't absolutely that can't be

the case, right, absolutely not. How could it be because we're not providing the tens of millions of dollars to fill the coffers and the political action committees of politicians on both sides of the aisle. So who do you think that they are ultimately listening to? Are they listening to their constituents or they're listening to their donors. And this is the same thing that we know to be true about companies. Do you care about the consumer or

you care about your shareholder. We all know the answers to this question. So I'm confused about how we have to continue pretending that the problem, the source, right, of all of the issues with regard to our body politic right now is in capitalism and our addiction to greed.

If you were to remove money from the situation, right and go back to a place where you capped the amount of money right that politicians could receive from companies, right, and that you cap that out so that there was a level playing field, so that I'm not only having my eye on who can provide me millions, right, fucking Joe mansion and your yacht and your fucking Maserati that you drive around in a state where I think that the average the average income is like under thirty thousand

dollars a year, but you're popping your collar living on a yacht, like make it make sense. But those people have voted this man back in power at all levels, right for the last four decades. The point being is that we need to interrogate what is at the source of our troubles, right. It isn't just that we are hoping that these companies will be benevolent. It isn't just that we're hoping that our politicians have morals and shared values,

because we know that those things are not true. But the point is for us to realize, Wait a minute, who am I voting in? Where do they get their money from? Right? How am I supposed to have a voice when they are getting their resources from the NRA, from big oil, from big coal, from big pharma like Kirsten's cinema. It's so incredibly infuriating to me because every time that we take a step forward in this country, we take like seventeen thousand steps backwards. And it's why

we never get anywhere. Why we have Democrats still applauding at the same pieces of legislation that they haven't passed in ten years. But somehow this year, with a fifty fifty split in the Senate, it's going to be the magic year that we're going to actually get things done. No, No,

that is not happening. And now I want to transition to a couple of conversations that I had at the end of last week and yesterday with folks on the Philadelphia station WRUD and then also over in Chicago at w v O N. These are two of the last remaining black run, black owned radio stations in the country. Now, I went on because I go on these networks at least once a month to just give a rundown on

the things that people need to pay attention to. This past week, I went on in order to talk about the Ukraine and the potential of World War three and the fact that Putin is now in control of the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, and that should we this is the question that was being post Should we put racism right? The racism that is being experienced by African immigrants and other immigrants of color who are also alongside with their white counterparts trying to flee war and

certain death. Should we put the racism and the discrimination that we have seen now finally find its way into mainstream, if only for a brief segment, on hold, because quote unquote, we have bigger fish to fry. This goes back to what I just said earlier. When is the right time for us to talk about racism? Think about this? When the when is the right time? Is it when over three hundred voter suppression laws are rolled out across the country,

particularly targeting black and brown people. Is it when jerrymandering is set up? Is it when we noticed right back in was it twenty twenty or twenty twenty one, I don't know. The years blurred together when Texas had their big snowstorm, you know, the one that Senator Crews decided to hop on a plane and go to Cancoon while his constituents were literally freezing and were out of water.

But there, when the power did start to come on, it was very clear in what neighborhoods and where it was going on, which was in none of the highly populated black and brown neighborhoods. They remained in the dark, without electricity, without heat, right in these frigid temperatures. It wasn't the right time then to talk about race and racism.

Apparently it was the right time for that brief summer of twenty twenty to talk about race and racism and systemic racism at that particularly within the police department, when we all collectively watched George Floyd lose his life, not lose his life, excuse me, had it stolen from him right as he was suffocated to death by Derek Chauvin. So if these acts, these major acts of war of violence, right are not the opportunity for us to talk about

the underlying issues than when is the time? Because for me, there was no better time to talk about global anti blackness and the fact that in all honesty, there is no place for black people right in throughout the diaspora to be safe because whether or not you get accepted into foreign elite institutions in order to do study. And you think in that time, as many of these African students, did you know, I am enjoying my time in the Ukraine.

These people are lovely. Everything is great until push comes to shove, and then you're told to get the fuck off of a bus and walk twelve hours to a border to be met by white border officials who are like, no, not you, not you, not you, black person, brown person. You get into the separate line and into the back of the bus if you're allowed on the bus at all, while we go ahead and tend to the blonde eye, to the blonde hair, blue eyed folks that are fleeing.

So I was on these radio stations and one of the gentlemen that I was on with said, and he's a black man. David Seaton, one of the stars of the Buchanan and Seaton Show on wv O N in Chicago said that he did not believe that this was racism that we were seeing play out, that he believed

that it was nationalism that was playing out instead. Now I pushed back against that because to me, one, there is no difference, right, there is no way that you look at what is happening in the Ukraine or what was happening in mainstream media what continues to happen where they are going through and showing you these stories of people that are fleeing, children that have no home, people that are sleeping in subway stations, folks that are trying

to get out, and you're showing this perspective of for the public to invoke empathy. But what Aim and Mohadeen had said on MSNBC over the weekend is that if you were to look at the world map, we have a global refugee crisis in Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Ethiopia, Ukraine,

Venezuela like it isn't just in Europe. And so if we can't have honest conversations one about coverage and then two about racism versus nationalism, then what are we doing and why why do we find ourselves contorting ourselves into all of these different machinations in order to say that something isn't racism when we know obviously that it is. So the question then was posed to me, and I want to pose it to all of you, and you tell me in the comments section what you think about this.

The question was, Danielle, if war breaks out in America right, which you know I have said is a definite possibility, and that Ukraine is foreshadowing not for us to have an outside foreign invasion, but for us to have these homegrown fascist white supremact cells do what they did on one six all over cities around the country, right, just like they did in Michigan, to take over state capitals, to take over Washington, d C. In the way that Ottawa was taken over in Canada. These things can happen.

So he said, Danielle, if this were to happen in the United States, and the United States is prioritizing American citizens to get out of Dodge, is that wrong? And I said yes, right, because here's the thing. No one is checking passports right of these people when they're coming on to the buses in the Ukraine and they're saying you you, and you get off right, they're making the assumption based on skin color, which is what I'm assuming America would do. It would be white people first, not

women and children. White people first, and then everyone else gets to be crabs in a barrel for how they're going to get off of the Titanic. That's exactly how it would play out in America and how things have always played out. So I'm confused about how we want to pick apart nationalism right versus racism when we know that in America in particular, there is no fucking difference right, because you remember that Donald Trump's entire mantra and Trumpism's

entire mantra was about making America great again. The underlying real mantra make America white again. Somebody brought up another interesting point over the weekend, and I never really thought about it, And I know we're going to be having a conversation later in the month with my friend Danielle Campamore from the Today Show. Today's show writer an abortion activists to talk about abortion and where we stand, which

is not in a great place. Being as how. One of the other things that transpired at the end of last week was Florida's bill to ban abortions after fifteen weeks when a majority of people with US says don't even know that they are pregnant. Right, And they make no exceptions, not for incests, not for rape, not for anything, not for human trafficking. Right, And you are trafficked and you are pregnant because you've been repeatedly rape in Florida,

they do not care. Republicans in Florida are making The Handmaid's Tale look like a Disney show. Okay, So the reality that we are facing, and this was the thing that was posted on Twitter, and I think that it's interesting is that anti abortion laws are not that are crafted by these white men, are not really for black and brown people. This is what was said. This is

not what I'm saying. This is what was said to me on Twitter, is that it is to the underlying reason for anti abortion law is to do what force white women into birth. Because the numbers the white population, as we know by through the demographic shift that is going to take place in twenty twenty fifty, depending on what metrics you're using, their numbers are dropping. So how do you preserve or bolster the number of white children, white people being born? Well, you enforce a um anti

abortion policy. Now, I have argued the opposite actually, which is that who anti abortion laws hurt are black and brown people because they are, by comparison to their white counterparts, coming from more low income backgrounds. So while white women can say, Okay, I need an abortion, I can hop a plane, get on a bus and go a couple

of states over. I can call out of work right, or because I work from home, I can make the arrangements that I need in a state where I will have access to That is all about access and about wealth. So for me, is our anti abortion policies really steeped in white supremacy? I would say that there is a deep possibility right that one of those check marks and

checkpoints is in fact to bolster up right the white race. Now, I want to go back to Donald Trump for a moment, because if you remember, and I know that we all are trying desperately hard to forget, but if you remember when Donald Trump was president and he referred to African nations as shiitthhole countries, and he said that you know, why can't we get you know, grants from good places

like Norway, right, which, again blue eyes, blonde hair. It's interesting, right, who America decides to open its doors to in terms of immigration and who it doesn't, who they have empathy for,

and who they ship back home. And again, this is not one party or the other, because what I reminded folks of over the weekend is that it was Joe Biden who emptied out the refugee camps where thousands of Haitians who were fleeing both the earthquake disaster that struck killed thousands of people on top of that, COVID ravaging the country, on top of that the assassination of their president. So folks in desperation by in mass were fleeing to the shores of the United States. But then under a

Democrat administration, we're not given the opportunity to seek asylum. Right. They weren't even held to say, okay, we're going to process these people. No, they were all picked up. The areas that they had camped out in were cleaned up, and then those people were disappeared, presumably put on some cargo planes and dropped right back off to where they had come from. Do you think that that would have happened if they weren't from Haiti? Do you think that

that would have happened to any other group of refugees. No, it wouldn't have. And I think again, we didn't decide, as in the mainstream media, to go in and do real investor litigation into what is happening in Haiti and why people are fleeing and what responsibility the United States has to bear for the current political and economic climate of the country. No, we didn't go and do a series of investigative reporting and show families and talk to people. No,

because we don't care. Because when we see areas of the world right that are inhabited by black and brown people, the assumption is made on just exactly what was said on BBC, CBS and others. Well, you know, they don't have Starbucks, they don't have Instagram like we do. You know, these are middle class people, so we must empathize with them, because it's not Afghanistan or Syria where we just expect

people to live a certain way. They said the quiet part out loud, and I will say the quiet part out loud, which is that we don't actually care, regardless of political party, about people who flee war, famine, drug cartels, right, unless they look a certain way and that certain way is white. And one of the things that I was said to said to me was it's impossible for us to care about everything right. That is impossible for us as global citizens to put our attention to everything in everywhere,

and it's impossible for mainstream media to do so. My pushback again is that if we are going to be picking and choosing, why can't those that we are empathizing with have brown skin sometimes? Why can't we also tell their story? Why can't we look for the shared humanness that we all have regardless of what our homes and our communities look like. That's the thing that gets me about the situation in the Ukraine's watching these reporters say, well,

they look just like us. So because people in Yemen and Afghanistan and Ethiopia don't look like the quote unquote mainstream we can't empathize with the plight of a mother with children on her back, leaving everything that she knows in order to flee genocide. We as parents, as humans like, can't empathize with that because we don't share the same Starbucks and soul cycle routine. Like I'm just fucking confused, right,

and I find it disgusting. And so again I will say, there is no right time to talk about systemic racism. There is no time right time to talk about anti blackness. Right it is genuinely when it is unfolding on such a large scale that we can't turn away from it. So for me, there's no time like the present. And is it because I believe that it's going to be ever eradicated? No, I don't, But I believe that you can place accountability and responsibility on people to do better.

You can hold those that abuse and oppress people to the highest of standards and make examples of them so that people begin to think twice. But we don't do that because again, we move and operate under the assertion that some people are deserving of empathy and sympathy and others just are not. And we need to interrogate why, why have we allowed that to be the case? Why is that okay should not be and whether or not

you know? And here was another thing that was said about the African immigrants or African students as a whole fleeing Ukraine was well, why didn't Nigeria, where a lot of the students are from, why didn't Nigeria as a country get itself together to get the people to get their country men and women out of harm's away. And you know, again I said, I agree. I agree with the fact that there was miscalculation on the part of

the Nigerian government. But at the same time, why is it always the onus on the oppressed as opposed to the oppressor, Like and there was another conversation about being able to insulate ourselves from racism, like if Nigeria had just stepped up and took care of their people, then they would not have experienced the racism, and so they should have insulated their people from white supremacy. There is no insulation from the matrix of white supremacy. It literally

is everywhere. There is no way to steal yourself against anti blackness, right because I would say to you, oh, just stay in your home, but you can be shot dead and there. Right. So the assumption again that if we that to me, boils down to respectability politics, if we just dressed the right way, act the right way, then somehow we can insulate ourselves from the abuser. And

that is false, That is a lie. And I really want us in this moment as people who care about other people to not let this shit slide and say, oh, well, we have bigger fish to fry. There is always bigger fish, right, There's always something else. And the fact that we keep sweeping anti blackness and white supremacy under the rug is how we are at the place and point that we

are in American history and life. The same tactics are being used with different technologies and tools, but the goal is still the same to keep those black and brown people on the bottom, trapped at the bottom, so that life can be easier and more comfortable for white people. I'm not making this up, folks. It's the reason that slavery, the slave trade was started. All these white folks. They

didn't want to do the work. They didn't have the power or the numbers or no. They wanted lives of leisure. So it's easier to bring in people, say that they are subhuman, work them to death because for you, their equipment and not human beings. Right, so that you could be comfortable take that same frame of thinking and apply

it to today's world. Right, it hasn't changed, and it's because we've never interrogated it, we've never challenged it, we've never held people accountable or companies accountable for how they have abused black and brown people. And so no, folks, there is never a quote unquote right time. It is

always the right time to do the right thing. And I just think that we have moved so far away from that that it's so much easier to blame everybody else than what is sitting right in front of us, you know, which brings me to the really troubling story right now of Britney Griner, who is a WNBA player who the world just learned over the weekend has been

detained in Russia for the last month. And why has Britney been detained Because Russian officials are saying that there was some vape containing THHC containing marijuana found in her luggage as she was being moved through security, and so they detained her. No one knows from when, no one knows where she's being held. And now Brittany Griner, w NBA player, has become a political pawn in this larger geopolitical fucking war games that are being played right now.

And I fear for her. Why do I fear for her? She's a black woman, and she is an out black lesbian in a country that has had killed the gay bills, right with a dictator who is turning on his own fucking people and has arrested thousands upon thousands of people, going to send them into somebody's work camp because they are protesting his war of aggression with their neighboring country where they have family and friends. I worry for her

because what is this administration going to do? Her, along with several other Americans, have been in Russian prisons for years and right now we're not on speaking terms with this maniac. So what is happening to Brittany Griner? What will happen to her? We do not know because until this past weekend, no one even knew, aside from her family and her teammates, that she had been detained. I think that we are going to hear more of these stories. There are going to be more pawns in this larger game,

and I am very concerned. I am very concerned about her safety, about her emotional well being. And that is a story that we are going to continue to follow here on Woke af That is it for me today. Friends, As always, power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck,