I know exactly when it was. It was the beating of Rodney King on live television, and the ensuing riots that took over most of Los Angelos.
That was when I knew there were two very different sides to this planet. The side of the planet that is filled with people who want you to succeed, and the side that wants to destroy you, for succeeding.
It took me years to remember that there are good people in this world, because for so long I as well as my family, were surrounded by white supremacy and ableism that destroyed our lives. Now I’m unpacking the damage and I’m realizing just how broken the system is.
EVERY living creature on this PLANET has the RIGHT and the RESPONSIBILITY to use their VOICES as LOUDLY as possible, but SOME people have some TRULY shit “Opinions.”
I can hear the cries of “welcome to the club,” and “hey you’re finally here,” from activists around the world, followed by the words “get your ass to work,” and I feel like I’m stuck in the middle of a cyclone without any direction as to how to step outside the cyclone long enough to know where it is that I belong, so I can do the most good.
You may VERY well be hearing VOICES but that DOESN’T mean it’s GOD. It doesn’t mean it’s NOT God, but if you can’t STEP BACK and FOCUS on what KEEPS you GROUNDED it WON’T matter. You’ll get LOST in trying to FIND understanding. Relax. BREATHE. Listen. THINK.
I am more comfortable today saying that I am a Witch than I ever have been in my life, and if I am honest it’s entirely about rebellion for me.
The Witches that didn’t burn had daughters, who had daughters, who had daughters, who had a daughter, who birthed me, and that woman has spent her entire life fighting against social norms.
My mom left home early, moved out on her own, found a place to set down roots, and built a family. She faced challenges and consequences no woman should ever have to face, and she learned to survive as a white woman raising two mixed-race Creole Black kids. She taught me about God, she also taught me that I can believe in God, without worshipping men.
As I write this, Paramedics, Police Officers, and Firemen are attending a grocery store in Baltimore where there has been another shooting.
The first of its kind – the public mass shootings I mean – took place at Columbine Highschool April 20th, 1999. It was ten days after my sixteenth birthday. A few years later my mom bought me the book called She Said Yes, written by one of the mothers whose daughters had died in the shooting.
Cassie Bernall would be 41 years old today. She might be a doctor or a lawyer, she may have been a physicist, or a teacher. She may have been one of a million things because she was a good kid, who liked other kids and was liked by other kids. She had her troubles, she struggled, and she found her way to God through a support system that by all accounts refused to give up on her.
As many of you know, I was gang-raped several times. So I have some experience with white, cis, Christian, violence.
I believe in God, and I believe in Heaven and in Hell, I believe there are good people, and I believe there are bad people, but I equally believe that some people are bred, to be rotten.
WHAT would YOU say to the man or men who TRIED to take YOUR life? I have a FEW ideas.
I do not think that babies or children are inherently evil, but I do think that the way that we condition our children in today’s society needs to change. Too many white, cis, Christian people, are making such a big deal about us being anything other than what they think they are, that they are turning their innocent children, into homicidal murderers.
When we’re talking about having in-home investigations by social workers, why are we not going into the homes of white, cis, Christian families, the way we do Black and BIPOC folk?
Because They Know How To Play The Part
Every single day Black men are killed in the streets of America, Indigenous folk are still going missing in America and Canada, and women are still being murdered every single day across the globe.
Toxic whiteness is now a weapon, for years while our families were busy just trying to get us through the 50s-70s without being drafted into a war they didn’t believe in, the KKK were designing programs aimed at conditioning children in the art of white supremacy, and it wasn’t that they didn’t notice, it was that there was nothing they could do about it.
The death of Martin Luther King Jr was an act of war, the problem is that people still act like it was a random act of violence, but the truth is that his murder was designed to scare Black folk and their allies into shutting up and going away.
And sure it worked for a little while, the screaming, the marching, the yelling, it muted itself to a dull roar for a few years, but then the next generation rose up, and started pulling back the layers. Now we’re staring at the mess of a system designed to destroy everything and anyone that didn’t fit into the “white, cis, Christian, mold,” and I don’t know where to begin cleaning up the mess.
I’m not comfortable getting into a relationship with anyone and bringing children into a world where girls are at risk of being sexualized at school for wearing shorts while white cis male teachers make my daughters as uncomfortable as possible.
The internet CHANGED the GAME. It gave us TRUE freedom by allowing US to ask QUESTIONS that the people CONDITIONING us didn’t WANT us to ask. With FREEDOM came the WAR.
There are many white Christian (or Alien for that matter) based cults posing as Religious entities, designed to destroy this world.
They are empowered with money through guns, drugs, and sex trafficking, while they go to church every Sunday and preach the “word of God, as written by Man.”
Everything about whiteness is designed to protect men. When you’re dying in a Texas hospital they won’t care that you’re rich and white, an abortion is still against the law. If the baby lives and the mother dies, that’s all that matters.
The reason that you are seeing so many young, white cis, Christian men committing these heinous acts of violence is because they are deeply and truly traumatized. I’m not saying that it makes their behavior or their actions okay, it absolutely doesn’t, it’s abhorrent.
But understanding why these mass shootings keep happening is important so that we can stop them from happening.
I’m not saying that we should outlaw religion, that won’t work and will honestly just take away something that helps too many people get through the day.
But I do think if we’re going to say that we separate truth and state, we have to actually separate truth and state. The courts need to remove the bible from the courtroom, not everyone is Christian, and forcing people who are of different religions or who choose to be agnostic to swear on a bible is honestly…really gross.
I do think that we need to talk to these kids who are being raised by extremists and we need to make a concentrated effort to check in with them knowing what we now know about what they are subjected to.
Beatings, brandings, and psychological torture are what these kids go through and we know that for a fact. If you don’t believe me go google the words “Gender Reassignment Camp.”
The reason that all these “not so random acts of violence,” are happening, is because these people are completely broken by a system that they are born into but have no power in. These are not people who think they have long lives, these are people who believe they are warriors for God, and they have 20, sometimes 30 or more years of conditioning to back them up.
I think about Cassie Barnell a lot, not every day, but I think about her a lot. And I think about the kids I knew who grew up like I did. Some of them made it out okay, but too many of us were abused by the white cis Christian system, and the only thing that stopped ME from becoming a serial killer is the fact that my mom loved me enough to let me spread my Black, Black, Blackity Black wings.
Thanks, mom.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 