"Fly in the Buttermilk"

"The promise of the end of misery, to be recognized by your oppressor as a human being, is just too precious for some people to give up. Perpetuating the status quo has its privileges. Capitulation comes with seriously boss benefits. How can anyone be upset with them for wanting freedom from pain? The problem is that the pain has an insidious source that is only temporarily alleviated by complicity. The pain will certainly return — with much more force when it does — when your oppressors need to be reminded of their power.

Refusal costs. Muhammad Ali refused and paid a terrible price. Jennicet Gutiérrez refused, too, and paid another. But they refused because they understood an essential, unpopular truth that movements of respectability try to obfuscate: We are meant to transform these antiquated structures, not be transformed by them. Monuments built on top of the bodies of the marginalized are doomed to fall. We are wasting our time decorating ballrooms that will be rubble by the time we’re ready to utilize them. Marriage will not protect us, just like the right to vote and desegregated schools didn’t protect Renisha McBride or Eric Garner. Rashawn Brazell,Sakia Gunn, Islan Nettles, and so many others still haunt the very ground we walk on and there will be no stepping over their souls without tripping."

https://thsppl.com/fly-in-the-buttermilk-bc048317415