What do I even say? After the last couple of days that we’ve had?
I’ve never felt such a volley of emotions, I haven’t felt this emotionally spent since the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 that just left me so completely emotionally and spiritually drained.
It’s been a long couple of days and I can tell because I can feel the weight of the subject matter that we’re confronting at the moment. But as a privileged African American boy from Las Vegas, this experience was long overdue. And largely necessary.
Mind you, I come from the decently sized hometown of Las Vegas where we were ranked dead last or nearly dead last in the entire country in terms of the quality of our curriculum…. Our curriculum was genuinely horrid so imagine in US History, how deep the textbook likely goes when it comes to the International Slave Trade or the Emancipation or the Civil Rights era. I’d probably have to say most of the education I received of the injustices of our people were from the many documentaries or shows my parents put on over the years. One core memory being the Central Park Five, that lies centerfold within my memory. I’ve had so many opportunities to educate myself and learn more and more, and it coincided often with Trump being elected or honestly anything immoral he’s done to erase African American history so integral to the beginnings and going ons of this nation.
So to come here, in New Orleans, where slavery was pronounced and so heavily relied upon for Indigo markets. It’s stunning. It’s devastating. We spent one day choosing to explore the history upon the grounds that we walked and to be honest with you, it was absolutely crushing. I didn’t yet cry at this point but there’s always this tension I feel when I’m at odds with myself. I want to put on a tough face when I hear the immoral deeds done against the enslaved people but I also want to emotionally express what I’m thinking. I consider myself to be quite the empath, quite the sympathetic soul. So it weighs on the mind almost immediately. Walking around the city so comfortably, at ease, without having to worry for my personal safety. I’m not at threat of being whipped or hung from a tree or being decapitated. I don’t fear for my life, fear myself to be lynched or brutalized at any given moment in time (unless of course, a police car drives near). I have the privilege of not having to concern myself with any of this because of the pain, the service, the years upon years of enslavement that my ancestors had to go through. And I am mindful of that every single day. Grateful is the word of the day every single day. But to walk through these alleyways and streets, it was so utterly surreal to know what lay beneath these foundations and the true history these highrises and restaurants and hotels had to this day. Walking past ‘Hotel Indigo’ for example….. To know that these were the stomping grounds for slave owners, that some of these buildings were slave pens and also where the enslaved would get auctioned off. There apparently was a church right by an auctioning site. It pissed me tf off. And left me crushed. Because, as a tourist if you are not seeking out information and the history that lies here. You wouldn’t ever have a clue that somewhere like the Warehouse District could be privy to so much inhumaneness. It's truly devastating.
Then we had the Whitney Plantation. Hearing that people (White people) would often seek out these plantations for their PHOTO OPS and weddings and events and yada yada yada yada bull. It’s disgusting yet to me, somehow completely on brand and something I’ve gone to long expect from that crowd. What I truly do respect from the new ownership over the plantation was the taking out of furniture from the white house to ensure that the building was stripped of its humanity. That you could not see these people as human or humane. Avoiding that entirely, I loved it. Your brain had to fill in the gaps and we’re already understanding that these were horrid people. I love it. Anyways, I actively chose not to take any photos of the building, of any of the stops until the memorial. I guess I just felt internally disturbed. I was adamant about that, I had no intention of taking photos of that house or anything surrounding it. There was no need for me personally. It was only until I took to the memorials that I pulled the phone out. Because, as Jae and I saw, there was a prayer that goes….
“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake. I pray thee lord, my soul to take. And this I ask for Jesus’ sake. Amen.”
A prayer that I’ve repeated myself to exhaustion. A prayer that I recount every single night before I go to bed. A childhood prayer, one of the two prayers that I’ve consistently done every single day. And it was here on a plaque at a slave plantation. I was speechless….. And shocked. I didn’t know what to say. I guess, I never thought the origins of such a prayer and had never even considered that it could trace so far back. It made everything that much more real. And seeing these plaques with all these names of children that were enslaved, only to see names like ‘negro boy’ or ‘negress’ and so many other blank, general names or some with no names or labels at all. It was devastating. It was devastating.
‘Slave Revolt Memorial’
And then, of course the memorial for the 1811 German Coast Uprising led on by the heroic Charles Deslondes. And for some reason, it never registered in my mind that a slave uprising was ever a thing. I am pleasantly surprised that one ever did come to fruition and that they had the insurmountable courage and bravery to attempt something so risky. Never once heard of it in my life. Never a mention of Charles Deslondes, not at all and that is truly a disservice to his legacy. But my goodness, the memorial. I was shocked to see that the ‘Slave Revolt Memorial’ had several decapitated heads of the enslaved on these poles which was a crushing tribute to those that suffered that same fate and had their heads placed on sticks all along the Mississippi. Jesus. But visually seeing it in front of you, utterly devastating and something that truly gets etched in your brain forever. It will forever stay with me, I know that. But I had this thought of why it was so sheltered away when it's something so poignant and integral to the ties of this place. And it made me curious about the capacity that we all have for truthful stories like this. Have we become so shielded from the truth or the past that something like this, only scares us away and terrifies us? It’s sort of pathetic, if you will. Idk, I just sort of latched on to that thought. That the plantation had to reconfigure the walkways so that this memorial was easily missed because apparently it was too explicit or frightening for guests to recall and interact with. It’s like, what is that line of what's necessary and what's deemed excessive to people? Having to dumb it down or strip it of its morbid details just so it can be made consumable or risk scaring people away from facing the horrors that their own kind had committed?
Lastly, ‘12 Years of Slave’. A true biographical film about Solomon Northup and his story of being a freeman snatched away to become a slave for 12 years before finally obtaining his freedom once more. It’s a film I will only be seeing once in my lifetime. I have no intention of ever watching this ghastly film ever again. But I am grateful to have it seen at the appropriate time (if ever there is one). I felt every single emotion. I was exhausted. I was holding back tears. I was sobbing silently. I felt completely at the mercy of the film. It kept going. So much suffering. We had already gone through so much pain and misery before freaking Lupita even showed up. And that's when I knew we still had so much to GO. But it pissed me off. It left me feeling so full of rage. Drained me of my willpower and rendered the rest of my day blank and useless. I was in bed the rest of the afternoon and night. I’ve never once heard of his journey ever in my life. Never even knew of the name Solomon. And it pisses me off that there is so much I DON’T KNOW ABOUT. I feel this guilt because of this responsibility to be knowledgeable and knowing of my history, of my past and ancestry. It’s like, oh you don’t know of this tale or this piece of history, then you’re not Black enough. It’s just that I chose to avoid the film because of ‘trauma porn’ and didn’t want to subject myself to all of that misery and excessiveness. But again, what’s truly excessive if the entirety of the film is TRUE and ACCURATE? It renders the entire conversation pointless, honestly. It drained me. It truly drained me.
To finish off, I really want to note how icky it made me feel to see one of my favorite actors (not people, actor) put himself in this film as the ONE good guy, the white Savior of Solomon knowing damn well he produced this film and it was his production company. He knew damn well how that would look for his reputation and what that would do to his image. I thought it really curious and honestly, quite a stupid move on his part. Who told him to do that?!? And I am sure this was in the midst of his troubles with Angelina Jolie. Makes no damn sense. And it makes me mad that we have to resort to white people to save us, to be our saviors, to be the vessel to go through in order to tell our stories. It frustrates me to no end. I can’t tell you how maddening it was to see that Solomon got out not from his own hands, but at the mercy of another White man. Just maddening. But what can I say, that's just the way of the world.
Just not my world.