The way the media always focuses on “the looting” during Black uprisings is absolutely intentional. They have a vested interest in this portrayal.

The goal is to persuade witnesses that they should neither empathize nor sympathize with our pain, struggles, and suffering (and most certainly, they should not become our accomplices) by attempting to redefine our actions, always, in the context of “criminality.”

They use their audio and visual tools (and their agents working on the inside to confuse, deceive, instigate, and malign) to construct a media narrative that presents us as violent and wild...

...and moreover, decontexualizes and erases the reasons for our rebellion so that our actions seem pathological and unjustified rather than human and natural.

And because human beings are so susceptible to media influence—and the robber barons are well aware of this; it is no coincidence that it is called “programming”—pre-existing divisions are further exploited and alliances are shattered before they even had the chance to form.

James Baldwin said it will have us rooting for cowboys when we are, metaphorically speaking, the Native American.

Toni Morrison said they will darken your already dark your skin and hyper-represent Black people in narrative of unlawfulness in order to recast Blackness as an inherently dangerous (and therefore, worthy of termination) identity.

Malcolm X said that media would have you thinking that the heroes are the villains and the villains are the heroes.

The media is wholly complicit in anti-Blackness, and is and has always been the public relations and marketing arm of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Its job is to maintain that, NOT dismantle it.

Our job is to critically interrogate it.

As Public Enemy once said: “Don’t believe the hype.”

And after the interrogation, we must dismantle it—returning to X—by any means necessary.