Y'all. Y'all I just CANNOT explain how it feels to be Black in America. Your every grief is deepened, your every joy shadowed. I don't know anyone in Kenosha. But I can't see those pictures without thinking about my mom, my brother, my aunts and uncles and cousins. (1/??)

"There but for the grace of God go I." It doesn't matter which god you believe in, or even if you believe in a god at all. You know that at any time - ANY TIME - that could be you or yours with 7 bullets in your back, while the media exonerates your shooters and blames you (2/??)

It feels like a kick in the gut every time.

Except for when it doesn't.

Those times are worse.

You've become inured to the death and the suffering of your own and you have to stop and take stock of where you are. "I live in a country that murders people like me every day" 3/?

It feels like it never ends. Not for us. And we can draw a DIRECT LINE from this violence to lynching to whipping in the field to kidnapping and dragging us off the shores of Africa.

America has spilled Black blood and ground Black bodies into dust since its inception. 4/??

To paraphrase: "The tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots."

FUCK YOUR TREE OF LIBERTY. There hasn't been liberty for me and mine in 400 FUCKING YEARS.

The roots of your tree are firmly planted in the bodies of my kin. And by god our blood still fucking waters it

Being Black in America is feeling all 400 of those years bearing down on you sometimes. It's seeing your elders turn their faces away because it's no different from the battles they fought and their elders fought for GENERATIONS.

Or not having elders at all. Losing them too soon

My uncles marched on Washington. My grandfather fought in WWII for this country & came back to segregation and racism. My great-great-grandfather's fate is a mystery that we're pretty sure ends in a shallow grave cause he had the AUDACITY to knock up a white girl.

IN CONNECTICUT

My family has been bleeding and toiling and fighting for equality in this country for fucking *decades.* And that's just the family I know about.

How is my generation still fighting these same battles? WHY are we?

And how are people still saying it's our fault?

The way people dig for excuses. For any scent of wrongdoing. As if "he was no angel" & "she had a record" could possibly excuse getting shot in cold blood. Or knelt on. Or any of the myriad deaths that happen to my people.

And then this 17 yr old kid kills 3 people and goes home

Trayvon Martin was 17 and was guilty of wearing a hoodie. Breonna Taylor was sleeping in her house when she was murdered. Elijah McClain played violin to cats.

And they were murdered. For no reason. For nothing. Because that's what our lives are worth to most of America.

And every Black person in America, who holds their loved ones a little tighter, a little more fearfully, knows this.

Fuck, it's so hard being Black in America. Y'all just have no fuckin idea.

I'm so tired, y'all. So tired of making these tweets.