I was just thinking about Wendell Pierce and how he thinks he can lecture #ADOS folks on history and sociology and it struck me how many people have this same willfully ignorant stance, including friends of mine. I have never seen a movement with as democratically distributed a

knowledge set as #ADOS. And it is also deep, which I think is no coincidence. It's not just that everyone can talk about the economics, social and political science, history, philosophy, etc undergirding both American racial identity & reparations, but almost anyone U talk to has

some real expertise in some area, either through their own self-taught efforts or through formal education. So why are people -- including Black folks -- so quick to say #ADOS doesn't understand whereof it speaks? I think it's because the truths of #ADOS are essential truths in

American meaning-making. To overturn these things -- economy, identity, politics-- is to truly build a new thing. And every single person I know who responds with "oh, you don't understand" or "ADOS misses the point that X" is invested in the current system. So we are just seeing

in real time more of the same. When Black people in America speak the truths of the country, people would rather live in a lie than hear those truths, because truth #1 in America, the first truth particular to this nation, upon which all others are built, is a lie: Black

folks aren't equal. So when you are a well-compensated Black actor, for example, who thinks you're basically white now, you adopt the attitudes and beliefs of your new identity. You damn well better, because if you don't, you will lose it all. And that's why #ADOS is essential.

Because the whole system is built on a lie and we are all sinking because of it. It is life or death for all of us, but people want to burn in their known lies rather than live in a new truth.