I am angry. I am angry at my race. I was in da hood, da real hood, down by Doo-Rag Downs, down by Sag Pant Central.
I was on my way home from Tyrone’s crib and I stopped by a little quaint coffee joint. A guy who looked like Will Smith and Samuel L. Jackson, and Morgan Freeman, and Denzel Washington took my order. I ordered a coffee black, cuz they didn’t have my favorite frappy for some f’ed up reason…ughhh.
Suddenly the calmness was shattered as a voice boomed, “Hey, get outta here with that crap—what you thinking, white girl?” The voice belonged to a big black man with flaring nostrils who had left his table and come up to mine. He looked real angry. “You know how much pain that’s caused to my people, you gon’ get knocked out around here for that crap.” Now I was freaking out, like I’m not even kidding, forreal freaking out. I was so confused. Had I yawned the N-word? Was I accidentally wearing an “MLK is dead, good riddance” shirt? Did he somehow know that my uncle’s name is Tom?
I thought long and hard about what had happened. I had culturally appropriated a black beverage, a real dark-skinned dram, a swarthy swig, a Ray Charles-colored refreshment. I had taken that black man’s cultural identity, his skin, and put it in a cup to drink while reading a cozy book. My guilt-o-meter shot up higher than Norwegian taxes as I thought about what we’ve taken from them, how we drink coffee, a black liquid that is symbolic of black people’s skin, how we essentially drink the flayed skin of black slaves every morning with our bagels. We are literally energized by consuming liquid apartheid. We are drinking the souls of black children because it’s “a pick me up”—and “pick me up” is a phrase I don’t think many black child slaves were saying when slave master came to the market, that’s for sure.
The White Devil-plan behind this is to rob black people of their cultural heritage, to use their color for our own gains, and at the same time condition people to think it’s OK to consume black people in the morning.
The color of coffee does not belong to us. We stole it from them, we shouldn’t be allowed to use it, and therefore we shouldn’t be allowed to drink coffee—cuz coffee is black. If you don’t quit drinking coffee right this second, you’re a racist. If you’ve ever had a cup, examine yourself and your choices in life, and realize that you are a racist.
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