I didn't see it until now.
Oh my gosh, I can't believe this.
What idiots.
So sorry I didn't listen, friend.
These are the text messages that flooded my phone on Wednesday, January 6th. It is a day that will be both remembered and forgotten, and I am not entirely sure which one of those realities is the bigger tragedy. They kept coming all day, and I am writing this to express the truth that every last one of these messages bounced off a heart, a soul even—that is tired, weary, and on life support.
I feel nauseous and petty.
The thought of days, hours, weeks, months, and years spent in "communities" with those who need a literal white supremacist insurrectionist coup to believe what I have been pleading with them to see and acknowledge for the last ten years.
I've been drunk for a decade with revolving, haunting questions,
Why are white people so angry? What are they so afraid of?
What have they had taken from them? How are they not free?
I feel like it is time to spill my guts.
I ran out of f*cks during the debate.
I am Hoping to God they don’t resurface.
It hit me that the texts were not coming from individuals but rather from a framework of white evangelicalism that cannot stomach the lived experiences of most people. It was as if the sect itself was reaching out to me, so didn’t text any of them back because the relationship is toxic and it’s time to break it off.
I’m ending it with a letter.
Please don't insult me with your novel dismay.
Don't retraumatize me with your sudden need for education.
Again.
The trust is gone. It disappeared a long time ago. It faded under the weight of grief so thick and so lonely that it made the simplest tasks seem impossible. What I really want you to do is sit down and shut up. You are killing me with your grandiose presumptions about my trust towards you, and you are killing yourselves with your assumptions about the innocence of whiteness. You lie to yourselves, and you force the world to ingest your delusions through violence and war.
I feel so embarrassed. I thought we were on the same page about love and justice but when it came time for love and justice to show up in real-time, you hid from both. I will never forget the day I learned that love and justice merely existed in your imagination. Love and justice were only ever abstractions of eager white evangelical Christian nationalist charismatics devoid of any real knowledge of the plight of the poor. You can’t be serious with your little “oops” after spewing words and prophecies that did violence to my soul.
It isn't okay.
I don't accept your apology.
I'm outraged, I'm disillusioned. And I couldn't care less about apologies at this point. At this point, because it's been a decade of crying and pleading and forgiving and showing grace and having difficult conversations and forgiving and showing grace and being patient and walking in the fine line of being friendly and also being honest. These wrestlings went unrequited; you never reciprocated the effort.
So I don't care if you're sorry.
I don't want your apology.
It's falling on deaf ears in the same way that my words fell on deaf ears as we watched that man ride down that escalator to announce his run for the presidency.
Like it fell on deaf ears when I tried to tell you that his inability to condemn the ideology of his base frightened me.
I told you these militias were scary.
I told you that I was scared.
I told you about the hurt you caused when you continued to forage for the all failings or felonies you could find to justify the execution of a black body that mattered regardless.
On Wednesday, January 6th, I witnessed hundreds of angry white people breaking into a federal building, and not one person was arrested that day. I can't help but picture Laquan McDonald walking down that street being shot 21 times in 13 seconds; he wasn't storming the Capitol; he was leaving McDonald's. I think of Philando Castille, who had a right to bear arms, being gunned down in front of his daughter as if he was a rabid dog. Where the hell was the NRA when Philando Castile was murdered in front of his family?
Your conception of America is a joke.
I'm sick, and I'm tired, and I'm angry.
And I do not accept your apology.
There are no words to aptly articulate the battle raging inside me as I try my best not to spew my disdain for your dumbness. I'm wearied by the burden of being neighborly in a country and a people who kidnapped my ancestors, exploited them, and perpetually seek to exterminate their progeny.
I will not accept your apology.
I do not receive your apology.
And I don't care about being nice right now.
Nothing is being taken from you. Nothing has told you that your life doesn't matter. Nothing has communicated to you that the system doesn't work in your favor.
How dare you prophesy in the name of Jesus and then reel it back after witnessing the abomination that you created desecrate the American temple you built. How dare you ask the people you made fun of, discarded, demeaned as enemies of the Divine word and will to even bear to look at you?
I’m Angry and It’s Holy and I don't accept your apology.