The Yehudah Project: What will this country lose when we are gone?

If the five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, it was clear that we as black people are firmly at acceptance-level TNT. Not acceptance as in capitulation to white supremacy, but acceptance of the idea that African America has spent precious brainpower explaining, cajoling, protesting, pleading and, yes, begging for white America to recognize our humanity—and, ya know, that we just might have to stop doing that.White America ain’t listening and, more importantly, doesn’t care about the pain of black people. In essence, as TLC once told us, it might be time for us to stop chasing waterfalls.

The way I read it, African Americans around this country recognized that we’re in an abusive-marriage dynamic with white America, a marriage in which killing the Tamir Rices, the Mike Browns, the Sandra Blands, the John Crawfords, the Eric Garners and the countless others is part of the American equation. Until proved otherwise, such as through a drastic increase in the percentage of police convictions for the deaths of black people, black people are slowly coming to the realization that the current system of justice is working as it is supposed to for white America. And that’s why we get pushback when we say, “Black lives matter.” White America says “All lives matter” as a way to tell us, “Nah, kid. They don’t, and they never will.”