I just read a tweet saying that if we can’t hold Trump accountable we are “going to be vulnerable to tyranny.”

…GOING to be?!

This nation has a terrible habit of reading history as though Black people were not human beings before 1865.

It was ABSOLUTELY tyrannical when the government SANCTIONED the trade of Africans as chattel, replete with insurance policies and all that.

It was tyrannical when 60% of that enslaved population was counted towards congressional representation without the right to vote.

It was tyrannical when 4 of the first 5 Presidents were from the state with the largest slave population largely due to that federal ratio.

What is recognized today as a necessary compromise for the birth of the Union is in fact TYRANNY.

Our insistence on ignoring the BLATANT failing of our founding fathers in order to honor their ingenuity and leadership is an obstacle to being honest about who we’ve always been.

We have been “the land of the free” for some (and even most) of us, but NEVER all of us.

So, yes: I am ALWAYS annoyed by readings of history that allow us to be worried about America doing American things to white people.

If we listened to the people on the margins before, we would’ve avoided all of this.

And please believe…

I just wrote that from the perspective of a Black man.

I didn’t even touch on the tyrannical treatment of indigenous peoples, Chinese & Japanese immigrants and Asian-American citizens, Latinx people, and a host of others.

Aight my bad, I’m friendly again.