Black performance, excellence, and celebrity

while having a conversation about the halftime show with students and attempting to get them to understand that Black folx are still very much seated in the realm performance; whether it be literal performance roles or the expectation that we perform more than our non Black counterparts while historically receiving less than.

it was the ultimate realization for me, that we believe Black excellence and celebrity means having some superpower and willingness to save us the little people. which is absurd. we naively believe that what they do, shifts our on the ground reality, getting us a step closer to liberation, it does not.

i myself internalized this same belief as a young person who went into theatre. It would take until now that performance as I knew it was actually about healing via community.

we as Black folx have placed our power outside of ourselves. When they took us from our land, shaved our heads, took our adornment and made us to work land we did not know, we were changed genetically to a power less people.

our assimilation endures as our ongoing genocide continues to be denied.

we have become obsessed with success on the yt man’s terms, which means our continued disposal, we are no closer to liberation that our ancestors who fought during civil rights.

we believe that there are only a few of us that are good and that the rest of us must do our part as people of small power who simply survive.

we believe Black celebrities have our best intention at heart, when they were chosen by those in power, no matter how cool they may seem, to simply distract us and nothing else.

my granny use to say there’s nothing new under the sun and I get it now.  as I see things from

my generation being recycled for the next as something new, when it is the same old propaganda, that keeps us wallowing in our trauma and them greedily gaining more, as a result of our forced, chaotic confusion.

we don’t believe that we have the same impact and power as those who have been deemed Black and excellent.

the hierarchy is irrelevant and it is the distraction that the dominant culture knew we would struggle to overcome.

we place our liberation on hold in place of “when I finally make it” and when we look up time has passed and life’s end is knocking, another generation of trauma secured.

we are at the point now where our culture is being sold back to us, and cheaply so.  sacrificing all for a few coins.  When we are source, in and within us. The power is and always has been you.

all of the things that we do on stages or sit in then audience and watch, were meant to be active tools of communal healing not empty vessels of performative satiating.

the ways in which our voices carry, our hips sway, our minds gesticulate, are our gifts meant to be of benefit to the whole, in our caring for community, the earth,  and ourselves well.

vanilla ice thrice has situated us into performance as the only way they would be willing to tolerate us, when they could no longer keep us in chains.

we think having and holding absurd amounts of poorly nuanced conversations in online space, in hopes of our 5 minutes of fame, will validate our belonging and importance, shifting our real time realty for more safety, when it isn’t.

it’s just another rabbit hole for us to get lost in as business continues as usual on the surface, divorcing us from any sovereignty, reparation, or liberation.

we weren’t meant to entertain, to provide them with distraction, as they plunder the world,  that still continues today.

is there anything sacred for us as Black peoples? every aspect of who we are belongs to everyone else and not us.  our language, our hair, every piece of who we are has been made into commodity.

we will argue in defense of Bey and Kendrick, but what about yourself?  who are you? what can you do when there are no glass ceilings to break? and if they are IT then what does that make us?

celebrities been around too long, they haven’t shifted a damn thing except the amount of coins they collect on your distracted behalf.

half time shows don’t translate to on the ground community care and mutual aid. neither do awards shows, or music videos for that matter.

the distraction was had when you watched the thing instead of turning and looking to yourself and the people in your community and making a plan. the recognition that we are the collective power that must figure out how to plug back in.

no matter how uncomfortable it may be, we must step away from those things that we have been coerced into believing are for our benefit, when they actually are for the benefit of empire and our ultimate disembodiment.

slavery by another name.

you are the tech(know)logy