Uncle Ruckus is coming.
As for the Joe's... Huey's probably not on their radar. Yet.
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I'm staring down the barrel of a .45.
Ask me anything about the gun. Every scratch, every nick in the brushed metal finish is burning itself into the back of my eyes. I want to take a step back, but he's shouting at me not to move. Move? I'm too afraid to breathe right now.
And why? Why am I afraid? I'm an unarmed, black, ten year old kid who has done nothing wrong. If we look at this situation objectively, there's no reason to be afraid. The gun is unnecessary in this situation. There's no reason for the cop to pull the trigger.
...who do I think I'm kidding?
The cop behind the gun is trembling. He's shaking so badly that I can't keep my eyes focused on the gun any longer. It's moving too much. He's a greasy faced, red headed, whitebread patrolman who probably spent his whole life in Woodcrest. He's totally going to pull the trigger. Why? Because I'm the first black youth he's seen that hasn't been on TV. Everything he thinks he knows about me he's gleaned from re-runs of Gangstalicious: Resurrection and YouTube videos of Kanye West's public spectacle at the MTV Music Video Awards. He's going to pull the trigger because the fear of not knowing what happens if he doesn't pull that trigger outweighs the fear of what happens if he does.
'Shooting while white' isn't a crime in or of itself. Getting shot while black? That's reasonable doubt. Why did the black kid get shot? Who needs facts to answer that question? Society has force fed people enough stories so the facts become less important. We can just fill those in. Gangs. Drugs. Gangs and drugs. Mix and match. You know you do it. You read the one paragraph news blurb in the paper about the black kid who got shot, then turn the page without batting an eye.
I'm about to become that black kid you read about. You'll spare a sentence about how the cop is on paid leave pending an investigation that will never be written about. No one will report on a story when everyone can conveniently contrive their own facts from skin color alone. You'll read my one paragraph story and then flip the page so you can check out when the premiere of Real Housewives of Topeka, Kansas airs.
So that leaves me just one choice. Do or do not. And the moment I realize what it is I'm about to do, is the moment when I realize: I'm in a nigga moment.
Man, how did it come to this?
B L A C K • P O W E R • F I S T • B E G I N S
part i
The Town of Woodcrest, Maryland
8 hours earlier...
Martin Luther King, Jr. said, I have a dream. Sometimes I think I understand what he meant. Sometimes, in my dreams, I see the land of harmony and justice that he spoke about and I think, wow, this is amazing.
Then I wake up.
The rhetoric and imagery with which Dr. King so eloquently spoke touches on an idea. That’s what makes it so powerful. Forty years later, we’re still awed by a speech given by someone on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial because it puts forth an idea that resonates with people of different walks of life. Who doesn’t dream? Who doesn’t want to believe in those dreams?
But we live in the real world, and that’s what makes waking up so hard.
I lie awake and stare at the ceiling, wondering whether that dream could ever be more than a fantasy. Forty years later, racism isn’t any less relevant to social issues, merely more readily concealed. Forty years ago, Dr. King remarked about how a great American signed an Emancipation Proclamation, and yet at that time – a hundred years later – the Negro still was not free.
Today, a black man resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, something not even imagined in King’s time or any time before, or even after. And, yet, for all that supposed progress the nation’s prisons are overcrowded with African-American inmates. Over represented in prison populations, under represented in graduating high school and college classes, or economic classes. The ghetto remains synonymous with the black American. And the idea of the black American family is now replete with phrases like ‘baby momma’ and ‘baby daddy.’
Was this what Dr. King envisioned when he looked forward to the future and said, “I have a dream”?
The back of a man’s hand connected with a glancing blow against the side of my head. Bolting upright in bed, I reach a hand up to guard the ear that had just been boxed. Standing over me is the man known to me as Grandad.
“Boy, I know you’re not lyin’ in bed thinkin’ ‘bout no I have a dream shit again.”
Robert Jebediah Freeman had been a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Corps during the Second World War. Coming home, he stood witness to the Civil Rights Movement and now lived out his final days in retirement in suburbia.
There’s nothing I can say in this situation. He doesn’t want to hear it, and I’m tired of trying to convince him otherwise. I don’t know, but I do it anyway. “Grandad, I...”
“Nigga hush,” the man commands. The sight of a raised hand is enough to compel obedience. “Come get breakfast,” Grandad barks, turning and exiting out of the room. “And wake up Riley!”
Still rubbing my ear, I look over at the other bed in the room I share. My younger brother is a lump of bed sheets rising up in the center of the bed. I swing my legs off to one side and nearly slip on something on the floor.
It’s a flyer from the bookstore at the mall. Noam Chomsky’s doing a book signing for his latest treatise on western imperialism and anarcho-syndicalism.
...maybe I can talk Grandad into taking us to the mall later.
Undisclosed Location
The National Security Agency
It was an empty, unremarkable cubicle in a sea of identical cubicles. Just a desk, a phone, and a computer. The phone rang. He picked it up on the second ring. “Yes, sir?”
“There’s a problem in Woodcrest.”
“A problem, sir?”
“You don’t believe the problem is a problem?”
“I think with the right preparation, the problem could prove useful to us. Sow disinformation.”
“Our analysts disagree. There’s a book signing this afternoon at the Woodcrest Mall...”
“What makes you think our problem will be there?”
“He wouldn’t miss this.”
“Funny. I was just at the book store at that mall the other day. I didn’t hear anything about a book signing.”
“Our men inside the local political offices tell us that the Democrats and the Republicans will be showing up to protest, that should give you plenty of material to work with.”
“What kind of result do you need?”
“In a perfect world, we take them both down.”
“Understood, sir.”
“And the problem?”
“It won’t be a problem, sir.”
Ask me anything about the gun. Every scratch, every nick in the brushed metal finish is burning itself into the back of my eyes. I want to take a step back, but he's shouting at me not to move. Move? I'm too afraid to breathe right now.
And why? Why am I afraid? I'm an unarmed, black, ten year old kid who has done nothing wrong. If we look at this situation objectively, there's no reason to be afraid. The gun is unnecessary in this situation. There's no reason for the cop to pull the trigger.
...who do I think I'm kidding?
The cop behind the gun is trembling. He's shaking so badly that I can't keep my eyes focused on the gun any longer. It's moving too much. He's a greasy faced, red headed, whitebread patrolman who probably spent his whole life in Woodcrest. He's totally going to pull the trigger. Why? Because I'm the first black youth he's seen that hasn't been on TV. Everything he thinks he knows about me he's gleaned from re-runs of Gangstalicious: Resurrection and YouTube videos of Kanye West's public spectacle at the MTV Music Video Awards. He's going to pull the trigger because the fear of not knowing what happens if he doesn't pull that trigger outweighs the fear of what happens if he does.
'Shooting while white' isn't a crime in or of itself. Getting shot while black? That's reasonable doubt. Why did the black kid get shot? Who needs facts to answer that question? Society has force fed people enough stories so the facts become less important. We can just fill those in. Gangs. Drugs. Gangs and drugs. Mix and match. You know you do it. You read the one paragraph news blurb in the paper about the black kid who got shot, then turn the page without batting an eye.
I'm about to become that black kid you read about. You'll spare a sentence about how the cop is on paid leave pending an investigation that will never be written about. No one will report on a story when everyone can conveniently contrive their own facts from skin color alone. You'll read my one paragraph story and then flip the page so you can check out when the premiere of Real Housewives of Topeka, Kansas airs.
So that leaves me just one choice. Do or do not. And the moment I realize what it is I'm about to do, is the moment when I realize: I'm in a nigga moment.
Man, how did it come to this?
B L A C K • P O W E R • F I S T • B E G I N S
part i
The Town of Woodcrest, Maryland
8 hours earlier...
Martin Luther King, Jr. said, I have a dream. Sometimes I think I understand what he meant. Sometimes, in my dreams, I see the land of harmony and justice that he spoke about and I think, wow, this is amazing.
Then I wake up.
The rhetoric and imagery with which Dr. King so eloquently spoke touches on an idea. That’s what makes it so powerful. Forty years later, we’re still awed by a speech given by someone on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial because it puts forth an idea that resonates with people of different walks of life. Who doesn’t dream? Who doesn’t want to believe in those dreams?
But we live in the real world, and that’s what makes waking up so hard.
I lie awake and stare at the ceiling, wondering whether that dream could ever be more than a fantasy. Forty years later, racism isn’t any less relevant to social issues, merely more readily concealed. Forty years ago, Dr. King remarked about how a great American signed an Emancipation Proclamation, and yet at that time – a hundred years later – the Negro still was not free.
Today, a black man resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, something not even imagined in King’s time or any time before, or even after. And, yet, for all that supposed progress the nation’s prisons are overcrowded with African-American inmates. Over represented in prison populations, under represented in graduating high school and college classes, or economic classes. The ghetto remains synonymous with the black American. And the idea of the black American family is now replete with phrases like ‘baby momma’ and ‘baby daddy.’
Was this what Dr. King envisioned when he looked forward to the future and said, “I have a dream”?
The back of a man’s hand connected with a glancing blow against the side of my head. Bolting upright in bed, I reach a hand up to guard the ear that had just been boxed. Standing over me is the man known to me as Grandad.
“Boy, I know you’re not lyin’ in bed thinkin’ ‘bout no I have a dream shit again.”
Robert Jebediah Freeman had been a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Corps during the Second World War. Coming home, he stood witness to the Civil Rights Movement and now lived out his final days in retirement in suburbia.
There’s nothing I can say in this situation. He doesn’t want to hear it, and I’m tired of trying to convince him otherwise. I don’t know, but I do it anyway. “Grandad, I...”
“Nigga hush,” the man commands. The sight of a raised hand is enough to compel obedience. “Come get breakfast,” Grandad barks, turning and exiting out of the room. “And wake up Riley!”
Still rubbing my ear, I look over at the other bed in the room I share. My younger brother is a lump of bed sheets rising up in the center of the bed. I swing my legs off to one side and nearly slip on something on the floor.
It’s a flyer from the bookstore at the mall. Noam Chomsky’s doing a book signing for his latest treatise on western imperialism and anarcho-syndicalism.
...maybe I can talk Grandad into taking us to the mall later.
Undisclosed Location
The National Security Agency
It was an empty, unremarkable cubicle in a sea of identical cubicles. Just a desk, a phone, and a computer. The phone rang. He picked it up on the second ring. “Yes, sir?”
“There’s a problem in Woodcrest.”
“A problem, sir?”
“You don’t believe the problem is a problem?”
“I think with the right preparation, the problem could prove useful to us. Sow disinformation.”
“Our analysts disagree. There’s a book signing this afternoon at the Woodcrest Mall...”
“What makes you think our problem will be there?”
“He wouldn’t miss this.”
“Funny. I was just at the book store at that mall the other day. I didn’t hear anything about a book signing.”
“Our men inside the local political offices tell us that the Democrats and the Republicans will be showing up to protest, that should give you plenty of material to work with.”
“What kind of result do you need?”
“In a perfect world, we take them both down.”
“Understood, sir.”
“And the problem?”
“It won’t be a problem, sir.”
Awesome. The afro debuts tonight!
My work here is done...
...What am I saying? I haven't even started yet.
...What am I saying? I haven't even started yet.
I think the question is, how long until Uncle Ruckus shows up on the Joes?
I mean, if they'll take Dee-Jay and Captain Grid-Iron... they'll pretty much take anyone.
I mean, if they'll take Dee-Jay and Captain Grid-Iron... they'll pretty much take anyone.
Huey Freeman vs. Snake Eyes vs. Storm Shadow vs. Bushido Brown.
You have to admit, that would be something. Toss in the Foot or the TMNT and it could be a Dragon Ball Z worthy world martial arts tournament.
You have to admit, that would be something. Toss in the Foot or the TMNT and it could be a Dragon Ball Z worthy world martial arts tournament.
Chapatrap said
So, Nautolans are amphibious, I get that. But are they fresh watered or salt watered?
It's not specified, but I'd assume most of the water on Glee Anselm (their homeworld) would be saltwater. Their name is derived from nautiloids, which can only survive in saltwater... but the Nautolans appear to be the most resilient of the amphibians we see in Star Wars given the degree to which they endure non-aquatic environments without assistance (more so if we factor in Kit Fisto's appearances from the Clone Wars movie and TV series).
So I'd assume they're at home in saltwater but able to tolerate freshwater in the same way that they tolerate being in no water at all.
Youngling: The adventure continues!
In this harrowing episode, the intrepid adventuring adventurer had bravely dared the Ventilation Shafts of Mortes, the narrow bridges of Maintenance Walk, and recovered the Sacred Relic of Gortorgophlez from out of the Caverns of Portune. Note that the Sacred Relic of Gortorgophlez may have closely resembled a broken laser sight lens from off of a DC-15S and the Caverns of Portune may have more closely resembled the private quarters on board the clone commando drop ship.
Having transitioned from out of the lightsaber workout to exploring the ship again, the young Nautolan now found himself in the ship's galley. Small hands plied at the controls to the autochef as the youngling looked over a menu that, while small, still presented him with more freedom and choice than he had ever known in the Jedi Temple.
How did people decide what they wanted without being told?
There were, of course, perfectly nutritionally functional ration packs lying around... but the autochef represented a kind of rebellion from logic or functionality. He could order something that wasn't a ration pack. It was an invitation to be different for a youngling who had spent his entire childhood training to be just like all the Jedi kids around him. To meditate on command, on demand, and in harmony. To practice his Soresu on command, on demand, and in harmony. To use the Force on command, on demand, and in harmony.
Unity and harmony were really nice words. And they really, really sucked when one wasn't as good, or better, as everyone else. Zak always felt like he was behind all of the others in the meditation classes, or that he was having to wait for everyone to catch up to him in the Soresu lessons.
But to be able to order from an autochef? Not to have to wait for everyone to get their food, and make certain everything was fairly distributed or shared or no one ate before any other youngling... To be able to pick what he wanted to eat. And when he wanted to eat.
It was the most un-Jedi thing he'd come across since they'd left the Temple.
He had a meat-filled pastry stuck in his mouth, a handful of algae fritters in his hand, and was wiping a greasy palm on the front of his tunic as he emerged back into the communal hangar bay. The sight of the myriad of Jedi dressed as... well, regular people... took him for surprise in how very different the same people could look outside of their Jedi robes. Hoping back on top of a crate, the moss green youth started munching away at the meaty pastry. His short legs absently swung back and forth, as dark eyes surveyed the assembly that was preparing to depart.
Nar Shadda didn't sound like all that scary of a place to him. He'd just walked out of a whole planet of clones that had been shooting at him. If some sleemo blaster-brain thought he was going to come after the Jedi, Zak would be ready to take him down!
Well, not really.
Zak only knew Soresu. So he really couldn't take people down. But he could deflect blaster bolts until they were so tired of shooting at him that they'd fall over in exhaustion. Or something.
Okay, not that cool at all. Still, Nar Shadda didn't seem like all that scary of a place to him.
In this harrowing episode, the intrepid adventuring adventurer had bravely dared the Ventilation Shafts of Mortes, the narrow bridges of Maintenance Walk, and recovered the Sacred Relic of Gortorgophlez from out of the Caverns of Portune. Note that the Sacred Relic of Gortorgophlez may have closely resembled a broken laser sight lens from off of a DC-15S and the Caverns of Portune may have more closely resembled the private quarters on board the clone commando drop ship.
Having transitioned from out of the lightsaber workout to exploring the ship again, the young Nautolan now found himself in the ship's galley. Small hands plied at the controls to the autochef as the youngling looked over a menu that, while small, still presented him with more freedom and choice than he had ever known in the Jedi Temple.
How did people decide what they wanted without being told?
There were, of course, perfectly nutritionally functional ration packs lying around... but the autochef represented a kind of rebellion from logic or functionality. He could order something that wasn't a ration pack. It was an invitation to be different for a youngling who had spent his entire childhood training to be just like all the Jedi kids around him. To meditate on command, on demand, and in harmony. To practice his Soresu on command, on demand, and in harmony. To use the Force on command, on demand, and in harmony.
Unity and harmony were really nice words. And they really, really sucked when one wasn't as good, or better, as everyone else. Zak always felt like he was behind all of the others in the meditation classes, or that he was having to wait for everyone to catch up to him in the Soresu lessons.
But to be able to order from an autochef? Not to have to wait for everyone to get their food, and make certain everything was fairly distributed or shared or no one ate before any other youngling... To be able to pick what he wanted to eat. And when he wanted to eat.
It was the most un-Jedi thing he'd come across since they'd left the Temple.
He had a meat-filled pastry stuck in his mouth, a handful of algae fritters in his hand, and was wiping a greasy palm on the front of his tunic as he emerged back into the communal hangar bay. The sight of the myriad of Jedi dressed as... well, regular people... took him for surprise in how very different the same people could look outside of their Jedi robes. Hoping back on top of a crate, the moss green youth started munching away at the meaty pastry. His short legs absently swung back and forth, as dark eyes surveyed the assembly that was preparing to depart.
Nar Shadda didn't sound like all that scary of a place to him. He'd just walked out of a whole planet of clones that had been shooting at him. If some sleemo blaster-brain thought he was going to come after the Jedi, Zak would be ready to take him down!
Well, not really.
Zak only knew Soresu. So he really couldn't take people down. But he could deflect blaster bolts until they were so tired of shooting at him that they'd fall over in exhaustion. Or something.
Okay, not that cool at all. Still, Nar Shadda didn't seem like all that scary of a place to him.
Maybe this will help get me back in the swing of things.
Disclaimer: I spent several hours trying to talk myself out of this. This is probably going to get me banned from RPG. If it doesn't, it should. So I'm going on record now as saying I'm sorry to the many, many people I'm probably about to offend if this gets approved.
Independent Comics Universe RPG Character Sheet
Player Name: Bounce
Character: Huey Freeman (Aaron McGruder's The Boondocks)
Power and Abilities: As the founder of 23 radical leftist organizations, including the Black Revolutionary Organization or B.R.O., Africans Fighting Racism and Opression or A.F.R.O.,and the Black Radical Underground Heroes, or B.R.U.H., Huey Freeman is a ten-year old activist, revolutionary, and known domestic terrorist. He has no super powers. He has no alien technology. What he does have is an amazing gift for oration, a brilliant mind, keen wit, and skills in both Kendo and Jeet Kune Do that are above the norm for a ten year old inner city youth and have allowed Huey to spar with adults on equal footing in many cases.
Huey has demonstrated proclivities with both electrical engineering and chemistry. An avid reader, he has studied classical histories of many of the world's cultures and is known to speak Mandarin Chinese.
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Character Notes [Established Rogues, NPCs, etc]: Robert Jebediah "Grandad" Freeman, Riley Freeman (aka Escobar, aka Young Reezy, aka Louis Rich...), Tom DuBois, Sara DuBois, Jazmine DuBois, Hiro Otomo, Michael Caesar, Uncle Ruckus (no relation), Cindy McPhearson, Principal Williams, John Petto (all from the comic strip). If permitted, I may also borrow Bushido Brown, Ed Wuncler, and Colonel Stinkmeiner from the television series.
Background and Story So Far: I am not a prophet. I'm just a kid from the streets of Chicago. Or, I was a kid from the streets... until my grandad got custody of me and my brother, then brought us out to Woodcrest, Maryland. I don't know what he sees about this place or why he would want to retire here. It's like the junction of White America and Upper Middle Class. The kind of place where everybody wants to show off the money they want you to think they have, while mounting up debt and backstabbing each other with gossip.
In this kind of environment the life of a black, vigilante superhero is not for the faint of heart.
To start with, everything the government has told you has been a lie. Reaganomics, affirmative action, 9/11... But this didn't start with America. People have been doing this since the beginning of civilization. It all boils down to the need to control society. The Crusades were nothing more than an avenue by which nobles, placed in fear by the number of former soldiers crowding their cities, could conveniently get rid of a perceived threat to security while potentially increasing their territory. Need more convincing? If the goal was to re-take the Holy Land, then why did the Crusaders sack Constantinople -- a Christian city? Everything you think you know is smoke and illusion, the convenient application of iconic imagery and censorship to achieve systematic control of thought and belief.
Let that sink in.
You know what? The truth hurts. Not the pretty truth. The truth that makes people angry. Angry enough to get up and do something about it. I'm not sure that kind of truth even exists anymore. And even if it does, can you imagine the response? The truth is that the world is a hard and lonely place, and no one gets anything for free. And you know what else? One day, you and everyone you care about is going to die. Go ahead. Take the blue pill. Go back to your Real Housewives of DC or getting force-fed whatever tripe they're serving up on The Doctors in the guise of news. The sanctuary of your ignorance, the bastion of societal apathy, the buttress of cultural myopia is the very foundation of the white elitist power structure that claims responsibility for all of Western civilization without having done a damn thing besides riding on the backs of working class people.
That is the foundation that I have come here to destroy.
Sample Post (At least 3 well thought out paragraphs as well as some dialogue):
I'm staring down the barrel of a .45.
Ask me anything about the gun. Every scratch, every nick in the brushed metal finish is burning itself into the back of my eyes. I want to take a step back, but he's shouting at me not to move. Move? I'm too afraid to breathe right now.
And why? Why am I afraid? I'm an unarmed, black, ten year old kid who has done nothing wrong. If we look at this situation objectively, there's no reason to be afraid. The gun is unnecessary in this situation. There's no reason for the cop to pull the trigger.
...who do I think I'm kidding?
The cop behind the gun is trembling. He's shaking so badly that I can't keep my eyes focused on the gun any longer. It's moving too much. He's a greasy faced, red headed, whitebread patrolman who probably spent his whole life in Woodcrest. He's totally going to pull the trigger. Why? Because I'm the first black youth he's seen that hasn't been on TV. Everything he thinks he knows about me he's gleaned from re-runs of Gangstalicious: Resurrection and YouTube videos of Kanye West's public spectacle at the MTV Music Video Awards. He's going to pull the trigger because the fear of not knowing what happens if he doesn't pull that trigger outweighs the fear of what happens if he does.
'Shooting while white' isn't a crime in or of itself. Getting shot while black? That's reasonable doubt. Why did the black kid get shot? Who needs facts to answer that question? Society has force fed people enough stories so the facts become less important. We can just fill those in. Gangs. Drugs. Gangs and drugs. Mix and match. You know you do it. You read the one paragraph news blurb in the paper about the black kid who got shot, then turn the page without batting an eye.
I'm about to become that black kid you read about. You'll spare a sentence about how the cop is on paid leave pending an investigation that will never be written about. No one will report on a story when everyone can conveniently contrive their own facts from skin color alone. You'll read my one paragraph story and then flip the page so you can check out when the premiere of Real Housewives of Topeka, Kansas airs.
So that leaves me just one choice. Do or do not. And the moment I realize what it is I'm about to do, is the moment when I realize: I'm in a nigga moment.
Man, how did it come to this?
Disclaimer: I spent several hours trying to talk myself out of this. This is probably going to get me banned from RPG. If it doesn't, it should. So I'm going on record now as saying I'm sorry to the many, many people I'm probably about to offend if this gets approved.
Independent Comics Universe RPG Character Sheet
Player Name: Bounce
Character: Huey Freeman (Aaron McGruder's The Boondocks)
Power and Abilities: As the founder of 23 radical leftist organizations, including the Black Revolutionary Organization or B.R.O., Africans Fighting Racism and Opression or A.F.R.O.,and the Black Radical Underground Heroes, or B.R.U.H., Huey Freeman is a ten-year old activist, revolutionary, and known domestic terrorist. He has no super powers. He has no alien technology. What he does have is an amazing gift for oration, a brilliant mind, keen wit, and skills in both Kendo and Jeet Kune Do that are above the norm for a ten year old inner city youth and have allowed Huey to spar with adults on equal footing in many cases.
Huey has demonstrated proclivities with both electrical engineering and chemistry. An avid reader, he has studied classical histories of many of the world's cultures and is known to speak Mandarin Chinese.
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Character Notes [Established Rogues, NPCs, etc]: Robert Jebediah "Grandad" Freeman, Riley Freeman (aka Escobar, aka Young Reezy, aka Louis Rich...), Tom DuBois, Sara DuBois, Jazmine DuBois, Hiro Otomo, Michael Caesar, Uncle Ruckus (no relation), Cindy McPhearson, Principal Williams, John Petto (all from the comic strip). If permitted, I may also borrow Bushido Brown, Ed Wuncler, and Colonel Stinkmeiner from the television series.
Background and Story So Far: I am not a prophet. I'm just a kid from the streets of Chicago. Or, I was a kid from the streets... until my grandad got custody of me and my brother, then brought us out to Woodcrest, Maryland. I don't know what he sees about this place or why he would want to retire here. It's like the junction of White America and Upper Middle Class. The kind of place where everybody wants to show off the money they want you to think they have, while mounting up debt and backstabbing each other with gossip.
In this kind of environment the life of a black, vigilante superhero is not for the faint of heart.
To start with, everything the government has told you has been a lie. Reaganomics, affirmative action, 9/11... But this didn't start with America. People have been doing this since the beginning of civilization. It all boils down to the need to control society. The Crusades were nothing more than an avenue by which nobles, placed in fear by the number of former soldiers crowding their cities, could conveniently get rid of a perceived threat to security while potentially increasing their territory. Need more convincing? If the goal was to re-take the Holy Land, then why did the Crusaders sack Constantinople -- a Christian city? Everything you think you know is smoke and illusion, the convenient application of iconic imagery and censorship to achieve systematic control of thought and belief.
Let that sink in.
You know what? The truth hurts. Not the pretty truth. The truth that makes people angry. Angry enough to get up and do something about it. I'm not sure that kind of truth even exists anymore. And even if it does, can you imagine the response? The truth is that the world is a hard and lonely place, and no one gets anything for free. And you know what else? One day, you and everyone you care about is going to die. Go ahead. Take the blue pill. Go back to your Real Housewives of DC or getting force-fed whatever tripe they're serving up on The Doctors in the guise of news. The sanctuary of your ignorance, the bastion of societal apathy, the buttress of cultural myopia is the very foundation of the white elitist power structure that claims responsibility for all of Western civilization without having done a damn thing besides riding on the backs of working class people.
That is the foundation that I have come here to destroy.
Sample Post (At least 3 well thought out paragraphs as well as some dialogue):
I'm staring down the barrel of a .45.
Ask me anything about the gun. Every scratch, every nick in the brushed metal finish is burning itself into the back of my eyes. I want to take a step back, but he's shouting at me not to move. Move? I'm too afraid to breathe right now.
And why? Why am I afraid? I'm an unarmed, black, ten year old kid who has done nothing wrong. If we look at this situation objectively, there's no reason to be afraid. The gun is unnecessary in this situation. There's no reason for the cop to pull the trigger.
...who do I think I'm kidding?
The cop behind the gun is trembling. He's shaking so badly that I can't keep my eyes focused on the gun any longer. It's moving too much. He's a greasy faced, red headed, whitebread patrolman who probably spent his whole life in Woodcrest. He's totally going to pull the trigger. Why? Because I'm the first black youth he's seen that hasn't been on TV. Everything he thinks he knows about me he's gleaned from re-runs of Gangstalicious: Resurrection and YouTube videos of Kanye West's public spectacle at the MTV Music Video Awards. He's going to pull the trigger because the fear of not knowing what happens if he doesn't pull that trigger outweighs the fear of what happens if he does.
'Shooting while white' isn't a crime in or of itself. Getting shot while black? That's reasonable doubt. Why did the black kid get shot? Who needs facts to answer that question? Society has force fed people enough stories so the facts become less important. We can just fill those in. Gangs. Drugs. Gangs and drugs. Mix and match. You know you do it. You read the one paragraph news blurb in the paper about the black kid who got shot, then turn the page without batting an eye.
I'm about to become that black kid you read about. You'll spare a sentence about how the cop is on paid leave pending an investigation that will never be written about. No one will report on a story when everyone can conveniently contrive their own facts from skin color alone. You'll read my one paragraph story and then flip the page so you can check out when the premiere of Real Housewives of Topeka, Kansas airs.
So that leaves me just one choice. Do or do not. And the moment I realize what it is I'm about to do, is the moment when I realize: I'm in a nigga moment.
Man, how did it come to this?
Got my internet fixed today, so I'll have a brat post up in a bit.
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