Black History Month

The longest text message ever; sent via group chat to my family:

Oh god its that time of year. Black history month. Bc as humans we need to be reminded to celebrate, mourn and learn from our history so we give some people months, other cultures days and many we just ignore.
We get to be innondated with graphic images and detailed recounts of horrific  tortures done to any and all black folks and any other folks that respected black people. And we'll be reminded every day, for the shortest month of the year, how lucky we are that we were born Canadian,  in the years that we were born- and try to forget or just not know  what our dad suffered and all of our mothers and father's and brothers and sisters before us- except for black history month... this month we get reminded of how horrible humans can be to one another, how jaded, mean, ignorant, cruel. And then we'll forget that history slowly slowly until we're reminded again in small ways, when we see indecencies, racism, bigotry, or some other group becomes the apple of sympathy- the Holocaust, world war survivors, ect.
But this year is special bc spike Lee and Jada Pinkett said no to the Oscars and Black Lives Matter. Like any of those boycotts or speeches to the Academy actually address the root of the problem- opportunity for equality in all facets, judge second... nobody wants to treat anybody as an equal just yet.

I clearly just watched a horrible video of a hanging of a handicapped black 17ish year old, it drew a crowd of 16,000 people  and involved various forms of torture and including fire, chopping of limbs, beatings, castration- apparently fair punishment for the unexplained death of his previous slave owners wife. 1960.

Obviously bawled my eyes out and then I brushed my teeth and crawled into bed and wondered how daddy's job search was going and remembered that I hadn't watched the videos that sister sent of the kids yet.