From Tulsa to Twitter

 I find it truly amazing how interruptions have always attempted to slow black folks down. Whether that be financial progression, life choices, or just going to the store to get skittles and a drink, interruptions happen that can set us back or take our lives.

White folks have always spoke about pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, which in itself is a fallacy because it’s an impossible task. Yet we are given this comical statement as some worthy motivation. It’s all shit.

White folks are threatened by black successes. Even if that success is minimal and doesn’t flip the table, the sheer potential of that force is enough for our cau-cousins to lose their shit.

Tulsa, 1921, was a travesty of white resentment and a repudiation of black joy. A repudiation that still exists today. Using the tools, albeit, scraps to benefit ourselves will garner regulation or elimination where as our colorless counterparts have the freedom to create, pillage, and make money unimpeded. 

Today, Twitter is being dismantled. Black Twitter was built using its tools but a community there arose with all the savvy, intelligence, warmth, and wokeness we could muster. It was/is monumental. It launched businesses and brands and writers. Yet, under the whims of a white billionaire and a failed president, it was due for the scrap heap. To keep the “activists” at bay. 

Twitter shines a light, not on the conspiracy theories, plaguing, Fox News, it shines a light on real time issues. It damn near keeps us safe because we can catch the wild behavior of the Karens and hillbilly uprising as it happens. Otherwise, we are simply separated and vulnerable.

Most black folks have gravitated to cities. We collect together naturally. That’s safety in one sense but a challenge in others because each city is a silo in itself. Twitter gives someone in Atlanta some insight into what’s going on in Chicago or LA. With Twitter going away, we will lose that real-time touch with each other. It’s a web that black folks may not even fully appreciate but just know that your hueless enemies do.

So I give a toast to Twitter for what it has accomplished in bringing cities together. And I hold out hope for these other platforms looking to tap into that magic. Just know that the platform doesn’t have to be Facebook and Twitter and IG all rolled into one. It truly has to inform and connect the cities we are already in to the greater diaspora.