Care Bear Stare Mode
Heart of Gold Bear
The white side of my family is freaking out about what’s coming next. They’re liberals and good, decent people. Even though they live in big houses, do fancy things, and own fancy stuff, they have an affinity for the higher energy centers and feel genuine concern about the suffering souls in these streets and banned babies on the border. They’re also experiencing genuine concern that they might lose their big houses, ability to do fancy things, and fancy stuff.
I don’t get down with my Black family much, as my dad left the Jim Crow South where he grew up and didn’t look back. But for most of the Black folk I rock with, except for the fancy ones, this same story, different day.
My grandad’s grandad was a slave. That’s crazy.
It’s been over 160 years since Emancipation, and the entire world is still reeling from the societal and structural repercussions of race-based chattel slavery that went down right here in America for way longer. This is why some Black folk are about reparations. They don’t want a head start, they just want a shot at a fair race.
It’s no secret how the United States got to be the baddest bad-to-the-bone bad the world has ever known: Black slaves who provided free labor and didn’t count as full persons under the law. It’s right there in the Constitution, the piece of paper my white family likes to bring up like it’s the Bible when they’re capping on Trump. Also crazy.
This is why leaders from China, Russia and plenty of other countries think America’s trash, especially when American leaders hella quick to jam them up about human rights abuses when their countries never did anything as crazy as race-based slavery. They still do a lot of crazy stuff, though.
My dad, who gave my mama his seed and me his name, couldn’t drink out of a playground water fountain when he was my youngest son’s age because of the color of his skin. Way crazy.
I was a big kid and look Black. Since I was 10 years old, large men in authority trained for violence were megaduper down to hurt me or even kill me if they saw me with my blonde-haired, blue-eyed mom, bless her soul, and she piped up even a little on me because they thought she was a white woman in distress. Still crazy. This is how it is with me and my multi-hair-colored, blue-eyed wife, who likes to pipe up.
Maybe I’m crazy for still wanting to get with her. Probably.
All this craziness just as crazy as whatever crazy Trump on, at least so far. And the slavery and Jim Crow craziness way crazier.
When you a slave or can’t drink out of public water fountains cuz you Black, you don’t give a care about geopolitics, nuance, democracy, and stuff like that.
We’ve got nukes and globalism stuff now, but sometimes, when I walk these streets and see that most of the suffering souls look like me, the wounds from slavery and Jim Crow feel too fresh for me to give much of a care about stuff like that, either.
But most days, I give more cares than a Care Bear on Stare Mode about loving my blood, spirit, and soul families, which is everyone. I do my best not to take it personally when folks don’t see my viewpoints, to lead with my heart, and to keep it moving.
Always gotta keep moving and loving.
