“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice…” – MLK

So…

Black people cannot relax outside of our own spaces. We are on constant alert.

And when we are assaulted, whether physically or verbally, we’re expected to take “the moral high ground” no matter the intent, or the neurological make up, of the offender.

And we generally do, not out of some sense of “virtue” or “righteousness”, but for survival. Because it wasn’t that long ago when retaliation, a word spoken in haste, even a cross look, could bring rebuke, cost a livelihood, or incite a lynch mob.

Everyone knows this whether we acknowledge or not. It is why a confident Black woman is viewed as “arrogant” or better yet “angry”. It’s baked into the operating system of the majority of the Western World.

I think Black people will continue “go high” as the former First Lady famously said, or as another poster said earlier this morning, “vibrate higher.” To do otherwise poisons the soul, weighs us down.

Besides we got bills to pay, kids to raise, elders to care for.

But don’t expect us to accept the excuses that white folks give at the expense of our humanity. That’s a bridge too far.

I told a white politician once that I didn’t trust the motives of white people at face value. She allowed that it was a wholly rational response.