my family is descended from the key family's slaves and this tweet hit me like an entire ton of bricks in the chest

it's weird, being a black descendent of slavery in america you are always AWARE that there are white people around who owned your family but

this is the first time in my life i have concretely thought of one of those people as a specific, individual human being that i could theoretically talk to or encounter in life

i don't even know how to think about this.

there are many people in that thread replying that they are also descendants of francis scott key and every one just feels like another stone in the pit of my stomach.

i feel like i STILL have many complicated feelings over seeing this, but among them is this genuinely irate and nauseated feeling that this has 100k+ likes because OF COURSE white people put that weight on the opinion of the slave owner's descendants.

OF COURSE they think that this person's opinion is extra special relevant and a priority in this discussion. there's a performativity about this that is heavy and stressful.

even in these moments of trying to tear down and move past these brutal legacies it's considered more valuable and weighty to center the white people who came from them, whose families benefitted from them. oh do THEY think it's fine, then it must be fine.

black people, who were the ones actually impacted by slavery, who CONTINUE to feel those affects in myriad measurable documented ways, already told y'all this was a good. we already say loud and clear, fuck those slaveowners, tear that shit down.

i don't really want to imagine the kinds of responses that i would have attracted, if hypothetical i had responded to the same exact video in the same exact way only said, as a descendant of one of francis scott key's slaves, how i feel, and it blew up that big.

i know the type of white supremacist harassment that invites. ive seen how white people fall over themselves to deny our experiences and downplay history when it comes to black pain.