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America the Ugly

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Election results are in for some races and not for others, most notably, the Presidential.

I went to be at 1:30am, after feeling my stomach turn and disgust rise up in me as I learned that Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell were going back to the Senate. The green stench bile of racism is all across this country. 

America the ugly.

My home state of Missouri voted for division, racism, classism, and xenophobia.

I work for a Missouri non-profit that threw our heart and soul into trying to make this state better for all people, even those who did not reflect our sense of decency and humanity. It was disappointing news.

We will not know what is ahead or what will happen when the shenanigans on mail-in ballots ends. 

What we will know is that in parts of America, over 50% of them prefer fear over hope, and that is a sad thing.

Black Americans did all we could.

At 13% of the population, all across this country, we Strolled to the Polls, we put Souls on the Bus, we stood with elders, we had brothers on the block protecting voting and preventing hate from driving through intimidating people, we had generations understanding the importance of this election. We gave our sorority and fraternity years, we gave our HBCU years, we have years in memory of elders, we pulled.

But Black America can not save America from the ugliness that is in the sinew.

The hate that has permeated the marrow of this land has been there for 400 years. 

Regardless of the outcome, the veil has been torn, what was hidden is in the light and can not be unseen. The trucks and flags, the signs, the gestures, the ammosexuals, none of that can be unseen.

This is our America that always was.

A descendant English speaking people who forced other European immigrants to drop their names, cultures, and languages to be assimilated into whiteness. A same English descendant people who orchestrated the wholesale slaughter and forced migration of native peoples and chattel ownership of a stolen people who were forced away from their land, culture, history, language, and name. That evil of whiteness permeates.

But what I still have to believe is that evil has an expiration.

In parts of the country, that may not have been last night.

But evil won't last.

Psalm 94 teaches me and encourages me that justice will once again meet up with righteousness.

That I have to believe.

Even as I have to try to unsee the brutal disgust of the country and ignore the tweets of Covid45 claiming what is not his. 

The count is not over, and I refuse to feel like 2016.

America the Ugly can one day, one day, become America the Beautiful. I just believe, in spite of. 

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