"Don't touch that!"
I was no longer the 69-year-old, then, who just signed the new lease for an apartment in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I was looking at the back of the white woman and amazed that my feet continued to follow her as we moved through the apartment I was to occupy in this predominately white senior complex. I almost expected a slap on my hand.
I no longer heard what she said, however. After 71 years, after having read so much on the history of violence in the US, I'm still stunned at the level of confidence whites with positional power present to black people-- no matter our age or education. The office personnel had been "educated"! "Educated" in what mattered. "Educated" to see in black Americans inferior human beings.
That magisterial authority "talking" in the space between us, telling me to remember my "place". To remember her role as a guardian of the racial hierarchical order. And I let it be known through my smile that we are done here! I never was in that "place"!
But the money had been exchanged for keys, and the money would continue flowing, and I, a black woman, was guaranteed-- nothing! No one thing! Except "death" among the living dead.
That's the nature of a transaction such as this-- not much different from the one in which my ancestors, one by one, stand, hands bound, feet bound, between two white men. One is holding out his hand while the other grabs the money in one hand and the chain binding my ancestor with the other.
And the lie begins.
"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed-- if all records told the same tale-- then the lie passed into history and became truth." If familiar with what is called Orwellian, then the reader will recognize this passage from 1984. Today, some might call this process of normalizing a lie Orwellian, but my ancestors since 1619 would recognize it as white supremacy.
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