Folks, this is more of a call-in than a call-out:

I’m watching some prominent progressive white folks on the timeline posting video of Aretha Franklin and John Lewis singing and dancing and referring to them as angels “protecting” us.

Please stop this immediately.

When you do this, you are making minstrels out of Black people’s ancestors. You are playing into the trope of the Happy, magical Negro. You’re engaging in a fantasy that they work for you and that they continue to work for you posthumously. It’s much worse than condescending.

I know many of you, with your big platforms, and at your big ages, still don’t know better.

But you’ve got to. And you need to do better.

That photo of #JohnLewis as a bridge folks are walking over? It is not okay for white people to keep posting it. His back is, and never was, for y’all to walk on.

Please read the room. Please see yourselves.

Don’t do, “benevolently,” what the Right does to us maliciously.

And stop participating in #digital #blackface more broadly. We are people, not pawns, not toys, not mules, and we are NOT your slaves. If you truly believe that Black votes matter, you’ve gotta believe that #BlackLivesMatter , too. And THIS means you have to treat us like PEOPLE.