'“Because of the slave trade you lose your mother, if you know your history, you know where you come from.” To lose your mother was to be denied your kin, country, and identity. To lose your mother was to forget your past. The letters distilled the history of the transatlantic slave trade to this: I was an orphan (p. 85).

The slave is always the stranger who resides in one place and belongs to another. The slave is always the one missing from home. Being an outsider permits the slave’s uprooting and her “reduction from a person to a thing that can be owned” (p. 87).

I, too, live in the time of slavery, by which I mean I am living in the future created by it. It is the ongoing crisis of citizenship. Questions first posed in 1773 about the disparity between ‘the sublime ideal of freedom’ and the ‘facts of blackness’ are uncannily relevant today (p. 133).

- Lose Your Mother by Saidiya Hartman, 2007

***

I awoke this morning…in terror, as tears existed as waterfalls against my Black skin. I stared at the ceiling for about an hour, uncontrollably weeping as if my heart had been ripped from my chest. Why, you might ask? Because part of me feels that maybe…just maybe…we are living in a slight semblance of what the Christians call ‘hell.’ Now, I understand that could seem dramatic, but do me a favor and open any of your social media applications and give it a nice scroll. Tell me what you see. For some of you, shielded by your beach photos and privileged blinders, this might be a joyful experience. For people like me, this can be anything from joy to terror in a matter of nanoseconds. By that, I mean that we can scroll on Facebook and see an announcement for a wedding, followed by a video of a Black man or woman being shot and killed in ____, _____ USA <— intentionally left blank so you can sadly insert whichever city you want. We can scroll through Instagram and see a sorority girl smiling freely in a helicopter, followed by a post pleading people to donate money for bail bonds because peaceful protesters were arrested for exercising their ‘right to protest.’ We can take a gander through Twitter and see a funny meme, followed by another announcement that another ‘officer’ responsible for unjustly killing a BIPOC has been exonerated and found ‘not guilty.’ That is what I see; that is what we see.

After a while, I pondered solutions and thought up crafty speeches that I could give to the Police Commissioner or the Mayor. I considered ways in which we could be doing a better job of getting our point across. I scoured the terrains of my brain for answers and I was reminded of a book I read last summer, Lose Your Mother by Saidiya Hartman. In that moment, I was reminded of a viewpoint that many BIPOC fail to realize: the ‘American Dream’ was not created with us in mind. Soberingly, the fact of the matter is…we don’t belong here. This is not our home. To quote the Great Lou Alcindor, “Yeah, I live here, but it’s not really my country.” This nation was built by us, but not for us. When Thomas Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” in the Declaration of Independence, he was not talking about us. Don’t believe me? I will let the good brother Jemar Tisby explain:

[Yet] Jefferson, as with so many of his day, did not consider Black people equal to white people. Few political leaders assumed the noble words of the declaration applied to the enslaved. A draft of the document denounced the transatlantic slave trade by accusing the British monarch of “violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people…captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.” The antislavery clause was excised from the final draft of the declaration due to the objections of delegates from Georgia and South Carolina as well as some northern states that benefitted from slavery. - The Color of Compromise, 2019

Imagine how life for BIPOC in America would/could have been drastically different if the the forefathers that history deems ‘brave’ had actually lived up to the definition of that word. That snapshot of history is helpful because it is quite easy to understand the ways in which America, from jumpstreet, had no intention of seeing BIPOC as equals.

In the last few weeks, I have had to take a step back and remove myself from the world…primarily in an effort to simply take a break from the hatred and carefully plan my future moves. This is not a message aimed at my personal community because for those of you reading this…you know that I love you and I appreciate your eyes, ears, and heartbeat more than anything else in this world. The hatred I am speaking of does not come from you, it comes from the world we live in. To be frank, I am tired; emotionally exhausted. It has been a long season, filled with many ups and even more downs. The year of 2020 has taken so many people that I have grown to love in the manner of fandom, study, resonation, love, friendship, kinship, etc. and I am simply tired of daggers being jammed in my heart. Among the list, I must acknowledge Kristopher Huddleston, C.T. Vivian, Sen. John Lewis, Kobe & Gianna Bryant, Oluwatoyin Salau, Ahmad Arbery, Chadwick Boseman, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and many more whom have gone home in the past 9 months. All of the aforementioned people share one salient quality: our Black skin and the struggles associated with our existence. Some lived full lives while others were cut short, and regardless…my heart is struggling to keep up.

To keep it G, it breaks my heart to see my people continually chained, broken, beaten, and brutalized with no semblance of ‘justice’ or ‘equality.’ The further we walk, the more it becomes evident that there are people who will never accept our Black skin as congruent in value to theirs. It becomes far more frustrating when we are not even ‘allowed’ to do our own thing and prosper as a culture without being torched. We developed Black Wall Street, and it was inadvertently burned to the ground because it was too prosperous. We had a Black president, and questions of his Blackness became the common conversation topic. We march in the streets and are met with sirens, bullets, and brutality. We stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters, and suffer from arrest and torment. We continually attend funerals and vigils, but are made out to be ‘the problem’ when we are not happy-go-lucky all the time. What do they expect? What would they have us do!?

For years, I have studied the art of activism and protest. This summer, I was approached by a White woman who (at the time) I considered an ally. In one of our last conversations, she said to me, “Lamont, I just don’t agree with the rioting and violence. I know your people want justice, but burning s*** down and provoking the police will only lead to more problems. If people would just follow the rules, not break the laws, and peacefully protest like they are supposed to, none of this would be happening.” Okay. There are numerous glaring issues buried with those 55 words, but I will highlight one and allow you to pinpoint the others. My response to her was simply, “Okay, I hear you and I understand how you have that viewpoint…but tell me, what is the correct way to protest?” Silence. No response of fruit, but a simple “I don’t know.” So you see, we live in a nation where it is written that people have the right to freely express themselves…but when people like me do so, we are met with violence and bullets. The conversation with that woman did not last much longer, and our connection deteriorated quite rapidly after that. The point is, there is no clear-cut manner of protest that is ‘allowed’ when people of color are upset. If you think about it, MLK stood for the nonviolent approach…and he was still assassinated. So again, what would they have us do?

I admit that this was a tough article to write, and I imagine that if you give a damn about BIPOC, it was tough to read as well. I wish that I could leave you with a smile and provide a promising revelation as a conclusion to this article, but I am simply telling all BIPOC + Allies that our best option is to invest in ourselves; to take care of our own, fight for those who fight alongside us, and to not be afraid to take a break from the world and it’s hatred. As an infantry warrior on the frontlines of the battle for equality, I must remind you that we have to work twice as hard to get half as far…and with that comes patience and planning with our people. We are battling an entire infrastructure that was created without a seat at the table for us. My response? Let’s make our own damn table and create the community that provides the most fruit for us. We are fooling ourself if we believe that we can dismantle the master’s house by use of the master’s tools (shoutout to Audre Lorde), so we must tap into our inner Savant and think of ways in which we can grow by use of our own. We must reconnect with our roots and return to the mindset of Kings and Queens living peacefully. Although our world is filled with hatred, deception, and continued betrayal, we can get through this if we stick together and help each other work smarter, not harder. Our methods will prevail and we will continue to battle, while also remaining cognizant that the body can only take so much before it needs a break. That is why we must band together in waves and carefully craft a plan to create the world that we wish to occupy. Some will fight as others rest; everyone must play their role and be ready when it is their turn. In due time, we will get to where we want to be.

We must fight for each other, protect each other, and have each other’s back. We must take time to check in regularly and make sure that our people are doing okay. We must stop fighting with each other for the limited resources that are provided by ____ and use our skills in a more calculated manner to boss up. I know this is far easier said than done, but we must start somewhere. In times like these, we may not be connected to the motherland, nor do we have the justice that we desire…but we do have each other and I have learned that a strong community is more than enough to keep hope alive. We simply must protect our own…at all costs. The future of our movement depends on it…

Siempre,

Savant 🌹

thank you for spending a few moments with me. i do value your time and thoughts, so please do not hesitate to send me a message @savantlamont and let me know what you think. i would love to hear from you!

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savant shelf selection: back to black by kehinde andrews

savant song selection: assurance // davido