RE: A Letter to the White Gaze and Imagination

Dear Privilege and Power,

I am more than what you wish to see. I am more than what you desire to hear. You see my magic and equate it to superhuman capabilities. My mystical, majestic, dark silhouette prances around your white, washed out, bewildered mind. You think me incapable of pain and human emotion. When you look at me you see yourself. You see every ounce of Blackness you have tried to paint over and strip. You see everything that you are without. Everything you are not, but yet you wish to be. My wide-ranging shades of tan, caramel, brown, and dark chocolate confuse you. You never learned that this brown complexion bleeds red underneath. You think pain is beyond my years. When my whimpers are filled with fear and disgust, you hear only war cries. You think I am over exaggerative. You hear only an animal playing dead and waiting to jump at your flesh. You think I want everything that you have and everything that you are. You confuse my disgust with envy. You think your skin is worthy of being worshipped and desired. You think I hate the darkness associated with my every footstep forward into to society because you have been taught to be the light. You think the light is where the truth hides. You never learned that the truth is always hidden, always wading in a dark pool of ignorance and high tolerance. You tolerate those who you feel fall under the categories of darkness.

You glance past the mirror when you walk by it. You look over the line of my gaze. You see not what you are. Not what lies within your heart. You see not the darkness of your soul that hides the lies you have told yourself for centuries. You see not the dark pool of ignorance and high tolerance that waits in the center of your eyes. You think your tolerance equates to acceptance. You think that if given the chance you’d reach out a helping hand to the less fortunate and marginalized. You purposefully forget that you hold them underneath your cold, dark boot. You helplessly forget that the warm, beating truth is crushed under the sole of your shoe. You see only what is ahead of you. And ahead of you is a stark, blinding image of white light. You gaze upon the world you created in glee. You see no one who looks like me. Your dull imagination is bland and empty. You blend in so well that you forget who you are. But the problem is, I never forget. I see you for what you are. I see the dark aura around your figure. I see the darkness in your eyes, the life begging to be saved underneath your foot, and I see the unwavering, misinformed, lackluster bulb that is you. If you bothered to actually look at me, the real me, not the one made up within your head, you’d see a reflection of yourself in my eyes. You’d notice the pain in them, the bleeding heart within my chest, the smile on my lips, you’d notice that I am a rainbow of experiences, of portraits. You’d notice, for once, that your whiteness is dirty, tarnished, and wilting away. You’d notice that you are the one truly cowering in pain.

You fear what you do not understand. You never tried to get to know me. You barely know yourself. You only know the fantasies that play around in your head. I pity you. I pity the way you think that ignorance is bliss, the way you ignore reality as if it exudes you, as if you do not belong to it. But yet, your imagination has seeped into my reality, it paints danger across every crosswalk and is ingrained within every encounter with a non-black person. Your imagination leaves you feeling lonely and incomplete, while simultaneously never leaving me alone. Your imagination is suffocating. Your white guilt is smoke rising from the flame of false victimhood and harsh, white lies. I write this letter not to chastise you. I write this letter to display a vivid picture of who you are, of what you have become. I write this letter in attempt to hold a mirror up to you. I write this letter to show you everything your imagination when allowed to run rampant has made of you. You, you false creator. You, who believes to have created yourself. You, who have made monsters of my flesh. You, who have forgotten your own demons lying from within. You, who feign innocence. You, who has blood on your hands. You, who needs to take ownership. You, who benefits from my oppression. You, who seems to have no regrets. This letter is to you. And I won’t let you forget.

With kind regards,
the Black Conscious