The Weight of Blood

by Tiffany D. Jackson

Just about everyone would want to talk to him about Maddy, but he had to remain unfazed, the same composure he kept whenever anything happened to Black people and they wanted unsaid permission from him to speak about it freely. Because if Kenny was okay with it, then it must be okay.

“How is she more Black than white? Explain it to me like I’m a five-year-old. If she has one parent that’s Black and another that’s white, what makes her more one than the other?”

We can’t take our skin off at night like it’s a costume or straighten our hair to blend in. If we could, thousands of us would still be alive today!”

And instead of holding the community at large accountable for their actions, everyone has continued to place blame on the greatest victim, creating a monster out of a young girl and using her legacy as a scapegoat to avoid self-reflection.

And I would counter if racism is ever truly fair? There are always consequences, both seen and unseen. In fact, I gather it’s one of the reasons the state worked so hard to brush this under the rug. Because if people knew revenge of this magnitude was even a remote possibility, there would be far less incidents of racial injustice in the world.