People say they respect non-violence up to the point that someone got a pistol pointed at they loved one.
Reality is you don’t really respect peace cuz you never seen it. Its all imagination. Just cuz I aint swinging a bat at your car windshield dont mean I can’t strangle your money with procedures and suffocate your success with policies. What you seen as a person of color for the last 500 years is war, from overt to covert.
But thats the thing.
How can you be peaceful when somebody thugging you to live in a ghetto? How can you be kumbaya when somebody strong arm robbing you of your education system? What does peace even look like when your neighborhood is built on top of a landfill?
At some point you say, well I love myself more than I am willing to let you keep me in this predicament.
Change is disruptive. It is as alarming as a gunshot letting off in the silence of the status quo. Its flipping over tables because sometimes, the people on the other side of the table really do want to exploit you. Sometimes they dont want to be cool unless they can rape you. Sometimes they feel that you should get pleasure out of them sucking every last piece of your humanity away.
In the presence of that beast, you say we need to be peaceful? That we need to just hug it out? I am sorry. Corruption and greed besieges all man no deference to race color or creed. Those who seek to oppress have no qualms about it. They just want green. Or power. Or to feel superior. Or whatever, they just have no recognition of your life mattering.
So my question is; when do we stop trying to make peace with a system that is content with our extermination?