Slavery is alive and active

The room

This is the shortest thing I say in the video and the thing I have repeated most since.

Some Black people think slavery is in the past. Wait, hold up — it is alive and active. I didn’t mean chains. I meant the arrangements that outlived them: who gets looked at as beautiful, who gets looked at as dangerous, which is where the conversation had just been.

Then I said the part that surprises people coming from me. I am thankful for the times I experienced racism and didn’t clock it, because of what noticing would have cost me. In a society that is institutionally racist, you have experienced it by the time you are born; knowing about every instance is a tax of its own. And I pointed at where the whole thing gets taught: the education system.

Later that month, on a podcast sofa, I said people think slavery is over while we are still mentally enslaved. The months after that only made the present tense more obvious. Same sentence, same voice, months apart. I don’t have to argue that I stayed the same person; the tape keeps that proof for me.