The fuller context

It's dangerous to see things in isolation. When you focus entirely on the present issue, you fail to recognize how that issue connects with a larger narrative that is toxic or otherwise dangerous. So here's my fuller context. This is the lens through which I see and evaluate the Dove moment.

In the same moment that Dove is suggesting that a little soap will whiten Black folk up, the FBI has determined that "Black identity extremism" is a thing, a thing worthy of FBI scrutiny.

Dove (and its marketing department) does not stand as some lone sentry in the policing and hatred of Blackness, Black self-acceptance, and declaration of its worth.

In the same moment that the patriotism of Colin Kaepernick and others is roundly questioned because they would dare to demand equal treatment under the law, a White man MASSACRES 59 and yet there is more outrage at BLACK men kneeling than there is about a WHITE man buying 33 guns in a single year.

In the same moment that the FBI, Jefferson Beauregard Secessions, Dick Spencer and the Alt-Reich declare their intent to target and harass Black people who would dare to consider themselves equal, Dove is but the tip of a long spear.

In the same moment that VP Pence is stomping out of a Colts game cuz men took a knee, White nationalists marched again in Charlottesville to protect a statue to a traitor, and the House of White has had more to say about the former than the latter. Let that marinate in your soul a moment.

This my friends, is White supremacy on steroids. Indeed, some might say it's White supremacy in a 'roid rage.

But this, this is America in 2017, where it's absolutely necessary to be mindful of the fuller context.

What's the fuller context? 'Intelligent' human beings entirely misrepresenting - or entirely ignoring - the cause for protest because it doesn't comport with their view of the world.

What's the fuller context? People finding ways to make the dead victims of extra-judicial murder the cause of their own deaths.

What's the fuller context? Being routinely referred to as subhuman mongrels, porch monkeys or just n*ggers the minute yt folk don't get their way, cuz yunno, their way must always prevail. We are not entitled to a way.

What's the fuller context? The FBI's COINTELPRO operation; the MOVE bombing; the assassination of Patrice Lumumba; the FBI's attempts to smear (and urge to suicidal action in) MLK Jr., so this move by the FBI to claim that Black identity extremism is dangerous is neither new nor is it even imaginative. [Parenthetically, I feel compelled to point out that this is the same FBI that routinely tweets supportive MLK thoughts every third Monday of January....chew on that some.]

What's the fuller context? The DOJ's focus, under Secessions (yeah I spelled that right) on bringing deliberate harm to POC. 

In the grand scheme of things, Dove is a nothing really. It's just one of a series of nothings with which POC are told they shouldn't concern themselves. The trouble is that these nothing micro-aggressions lead to very-much-something macro-aggressions like Secessions is trying to pull. Micro-invalidations lead to macro-invalidations like voter suppression, voter intimidation and gerrymandering such as the Republicans have pulled over the last ten years. White rage (based on erroneous notions of a Divine Right to Run Shit) leads to tiki torch-carrying dimwits, public intimidation and death, as Charlottesville proved some weeks ago.

So yeah, Dove ain't nothing to trouble your pretty head about.

Carry on.

Oh and for those who say Dove's history is a good one..........