In response to the analytical and dehumanizing language of The New York Times’ “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History” by Larry Buchanan, Quoctrung Bui and Jugal K. Patel…
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According to the numbers, people finally give a fuck about Black people.
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When a people are made into numbers, by nature, they become divisible. By design, subtractable.
Replaceable.
One thousand eight hundred sixty-five minus one thousand eight hundred sixty-three equals two, but one hundred and fifty-eight years have passed since that really mattered.
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“School-to-Prison Pipeline” this, “Thirteenth Amendment” that. It’s all just noise. But according to the numbers, you hear us now.
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The blood- soaked floorboards of government buildings, the welts across our backs. The breeding, the buck-breaking. The true imagery is too much for you to bear. So, I must remain a “figure.”
One darkly-shaded figure crammed into a diagram of a slave ship in a U.S. history textbook out of many. So many that it had become easy to think nothing of them at all.
Numbness is sometimes the survivor’s only reward. It can also be found in the assailant’s manifesto.
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Some days, the ocean beckons to me, too. Vast, dark, and grand, I want to return. Knowing is an anchor. I ground myself in truth, but I am drowning in it.
What do you see when you speak of “black bodies?” Do you feel your separation, the irony? Can you taste it?
It is salty. It is metallic. It is on your hands.
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According to the numbers, you finally see us.
I just hope those eight minutes and forty-six seconds felt like four hundred years to you, too.