Freedom slapped me in the face

rolled out the red carpet

rolled on the racetrack

I speed along pushing roaring

freedom’s a tripwire,

I stumble and fall

the car spins

suddenly

into the sky

flip flip oblivion

applaud the pyrotechnic

flash flash the asphalt

freedom punched me in the gut

or why the contemporary discourse on race is not radical enough

Why has racism as a problem persisted in contemporary society, despite sixty years and counting of conscious efforts to eliminate it in America? People point to a wide variety of causes - historical socioeconomic and psychological factors that continue to perpetuate itself in structured inequality, persistent subconscious discrimination despite conscious attempts to eliminate said discrimination, and so forth.

The answer, I believe, is simple. Racism remains a problem because we remain entrapped in thinking about racism. We cannot eliminate racism until we can move past race as a category entirely - that is, to eliminate racism we must transcend the very notion of race entirely. Contemporary efforts to solve racism only seek to resolve it by equating the races - that is, Blacks are equal to Whites are equal to Hispanics are equal to Asians. What we don’t see is that this is simply another manifestation of “Separate but Equal,” just on a far more obscured, less obvious level. We no longer have separate bathrooms for Blacks and Whites, nor separate seating, nor separate water fountains. Theoretically, all businesses are open for all races. But that is not the way it works in practice. Inequality persists on the level of race because “Separate but Equal”, though no longer true in a legal context, is still very much reality in social contexts. Most restaurants on the South Side of Chicago cater almost exclusively to Blacks (as my personal experience confirms). The very language I am using right now - academic and formal - is accessible only to a certain subgroup of American society that is overwhelmingly Asian and White.

In order to eliminate racism, we must radically reconstitute the way we think about race. We must eliminate race as a category altogether! In other words, we should no longer classify people as Black or White or Hispanic or Asian at all. The critic would say, but that’s what we’re doing! No, not entirely. For we still think of ourselves in terms of race, as though it was a real thing. Do you consider yourself part of a race? The answer is probably yes. If so, then that shows that race as a category still exists. The mere fact that we have a discourse on race shows that race is still a category, and an extremely powerful one at that.

In order to avoid racism, it is not enough to say that the races are equal. We must stop treating race as a real thing at all!

This extends to almost all human categories of self-definition. Class. Gender. Nationality. Sexual Orientation. And so on and so forth. The mere act of thinking of these categories as real makes them a problem. We cannot eliminate inequality until we eliminate these categories altogether and allow people to simply be people, individuals to be individuals, to be considered solely on their own merits and characteristics and attributes outside of any identification with any greater “group” or “category.

But how can we achieve this? Unfortunately, reality does not correspond neatly with discourse on the intellectual level. It is not so easy to eliminate racism as a category when real inequality persists among what we define as the races. It is an extraordinarily difficult problem to deal with racism when the solution to it requires the destruction of the discourse on it altogether. For better or for worse, we remain stuck in a world where race as a category still matters, is still real, and still effects actual consequences. How do we get ourselves out of this Catch-22?

I don’t have the answer either. Nobody does. But we can start on an individual level - by rejecting category race, category class, category nationality, category political affiliation, category gender, category sexual orientation, any and all artificial categories that seek to divide and separate and define us. Do not let these  categories define you! Fight the power they have over your consciousness! I know how hard it is - it’s ingrained in the very way we think, including mine. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do anything about it. Difficulty is not a good excuse at all.

as many stories do.

You stagger to the ground, gasping and grasping at your chest, trying to stop the blood from spilling.

15 seconds earlier an eternity

“happy 30th” said he the man with the yellow hat

gave you a present of a yellow hat a yellow hat with sticks and stones that break your bones time spills across the linear line carry fragments of your bones along with

“going on a merry little trip!” They said. LSD. Lake Shore Drive. The bone fragments dance, dance away, pulsing yellow orange cyan azure flashing back and back and forward and forward and

you are driving a car and Jeffery is besides you he holds the key to the apartment block on the 42nd floor of a building that you can see surfacing on the horizon like a dead bird that

flies into the clouds, a zeppelin that is full of Helium, no Hydrogen and fuck it

explosions, explosions that magnify and exemplify and exhalt the heavens with an awe-some glow that glows, “death destroy the worlds” sky shatters and earth ends

the end of the world, watch out. You don’t want to fall off. Here, scooch closer, so that you can see the edge. See the abyss? Yup, that’s it. Careful you don’t fall. Huddle with me. It’s so cold. Cold, so cold. I have a jacket that I can drape over you. We can share a moment here together. Together. Here, sit by me, so that you can dangle your legs, dangle your legs into the black abyss, the abyss of the edge of the world that is so

BANG

……!

fin

1. Create an artificial notion: Individuals. “You are you!” “You are a person!” “You are separate and distinct from other people!” “You are a being!” Individualism. Differentiation.

2. Give this constructed notion fundamental characteristics: Freedom. Liberty. Autonomy. Free Will. “You can do what you want!” “You are responsible for your actions.” “People’s actions and behavior are manifestations of their true self.” “Actions speak louder than words.” “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal…”

3. The rest falls in place. These new “individuals” will realize subconsciously that true “freedom”, whatever that means, is impossible. They may deceive themselves, but it is nothing but a beautiful delusion, a delusion that is hammered home all too hard when we face the real problems of starvation, sickness, poverty, death, racism, discrimination, military power, hatred, and force. It hits hard, it hits so hard that we turn away from it, cover our eyes with our hands and shout, “No! It cannot be!”

The rest of us sit, content, munching our burgers and watching our movies, running perpetually on a treadmill that enslaves us by promising freedom. The very notion, the very promise of freedom, is what entices us into slavery. We fight, we fight for our rights. We work endlessly to do better, to be deemed higher, to be promoted to ever-greater dizzying heights of wealth and power. We find solace in money; money is power. We find solace in power; power is freedom. When we can do what we want, when we can control everything we see, we are free. That is what we think. And so we work. And work. And work.

For that is the irony of it all; we toil forever for liberty, for freedom, but we die before we attain it. Liberty controls us. Freedom enslaves us. ”WAR IS PEACE.” “IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.” “FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.”

Only in death do we find ultimate liberation.

that the more sense the world seems to make

the less sense our own lives seem to make?