Dr. Rosalyn | When They Come For You

 

 

I've been holding off on this post because well life has been busy and I wanted to see how things would play out.  Thus far we have crushed early voting records.  History shows that benefits one party more than the other but we also have pandemic so folks are voting now so they aren't stuck in line next Tuesday.  I've offered literally every student I have a bribe to register to vote, go vote and take friends to go vote and still some are disengaged from the process.  And honestly, I cannot entirely blame them.  They aren't old enough to know what happens when people give away their power by not voting.  You have to live through some years of what that decision means in your life before you never do it again.  Well that is if you are harmed by giving away your power.  The problem for some of my students, and colleagues if I'm honest, is there's unlikely to be any reason that they will suffer any true consequences of that for a while at least.

I say for a while because the last four years has been an all out assault on "others."  Tonight was just the culmination of a long rush towards legally harming the "others."  A person was just confirmed that has already gone on record to say racial slurs do not constitute a hostile work place and that they think the previous supreme court overreached when it allowed LGBTQ folks the right to marry each other without people like four time married (to three different men and some funky parentage stuff in the middle of all that) former county clerk Kim Davis interfering.  This person doesn't believe that abortion should be legal or that women should be able to do a whole host of things without their husband's approval.  She was literally a handmaid in her church y'all.  Like I just can't even with that.  So in that one quick paragraph by my calculation unless you are a white straight cisgender man you might be in trouble right now.

Criminalizing abortion will just make it dangerous again.  As a country with one of the highest mortality rates for pregnant women, especially Black women, already, this does not seem like a good idea.  I'm super confused about why someone who identifies as heterosexual can marry and divorce seven times but the cute gay couple down the street should have to fear that the legal protections of being married are going to be stripped from them when they have been together for 25 years.  That hits home for me right now because my mother is in the hospital right now.  I can come and go as I please because I'm family but I have friends that won't be able to do that or use that privilege if their marriages are invalidated.  And if you have made it here then you probably already know that I'm a Black woman.  As such, I have benefited from the work of Ruth Bader Ginsburg as well as the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act (which has already been neutered), Affirmative Action and maybe briefly from the CROWN Act if it's ever enacted before this newly composed court strikes it down.  If you don't get insurance through your employer or if you have a preexisting condition then you should be concerned about yet another lawsuit to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, most of you call it Obamacare, which after this lovely contagion fest that has ravaged the country because of ineffectual leadership, could mean even if you survive COVID-19 that insurers are within their rights to either deny you coverage or price you out of the market.  Those are the highlights but legitimately it impacts all of us and there is way more lurking in the background.

If you are voting because you aspire to be like the leaders of some parties and all you are focusing on is wealth and power you are missing the whole big message from that book some of you claim guides your life.  Senator Turtle, you may call him McConnell, is literally transforming before us and instead of taking care of himself he forced a nomination hearing in less than six weeks when he wouldn't confirm a previous judge with more than six months to go until the next election.  He reminds me of President Snow in the Hunger Games.  He needed those roses to squash his stench.  Much like Mitch is hiding his hands because they are purple--like purple purple.  He hasn't set his eyes on you yet but he's coming.  The only target he has left are poor and working class white men because while he will exploit your energy he could give two craps about you.  You may want to notice how he has not in any way come to the aid of Daniel Cameron who he plucked out of obscurity to put in the position he's in.  Cameron, Ice Cube and 50 Cents forgot a central tenet that some of us never will forget.  You, as a member of an othered group, are only as useful as your ability to help the primary group retain their power.  If you have become successful, it's because you are an exception to the rule of the othered group you are a member of in reality.  So you get a seat at the table and you are happy until your status dims and you get pushed to the kiddie table or shown the door (see Omarosa, Diamond and Silk, Michael Steele and so on).  Regardless of any of the other ramblings, my question to you that are delighted about the future hurt to a member of this nation is what will you do when they come for you?  They will come eventually and the rest of us may be in our districts trying to avoid becoming tributes, mine wokers or handmaids.  

As an aside, thank you Juror #1 and #2 for confirming what we already knew but folks wanted to pretend didn't actually happen.