Ring Shout

by P. Djèlí Clark

“White folk earn something from that hate. Might not be wages. But knowing we on the bottom and they set above us—just as good, maybe better.”

“Reason and law don’t mean much when white folk want their way.”

She says that as casual as relating the time. But there’s a hitch in her voice that tell me she carrying her hurt deep, the way we all do.

So that there’s nothing but the music and all of us being baptized in its healing. It’s more than I can take.

Hear it came about, on account they sold the bodies of dead slaves to medical schools to cut up.” Emma gasps. “That’s ghastly!” Chef shrugs. “All of it was.

“You see, the hate they give is senseless. They already got power. Yet they hate those over who they got control, who don’t really pose a threat to them. Their fears aren’t real—just insecurities and inadequacies. Deep down they know that. Makes their hate like … watered-down whiskey.

Not just me, all of us, colored folk everywhere, who carry our wounds with us, sometimes open for all to see, but always so much more buried and hidden deep.

“I, too, am the afterlife of slavery.”