#JusticeforKyleBassinga

Another Victim of White Supremacist Tactics, and They Want Us to Believe it Was Self-Inflicted

My heart breaks.

My heart breaks because the change didn’t come soon enough for you. The world we envisioned is still a faraway destination, and I probably won’t live to see it either.

My heart breaks that you won’t get to experience all the beauty that life held in store for you.

My heart breaks that you suffered.

My heart breaks because I tried to warn us that lynching is still a sport in the US.

They continue to try to snuff out our light. They continue to hunt us like wild game.

“A tall tree and a short piece of rope.”

“A Big Tall Tree and a Short Piece of Rope”

The viral song that they will murder us to

readcultured.com

They continue to gaslight Blacks people, lie to our faces, and rule it as suicide.

My heart breaks because white people will read this and still not believe what’s in front of their very eyes.

My heart breaks that you just experienced the most maniacal, evil, disrespectful way to leave this plane.

We know you didn’t go out like that. We know better.

Lynching has always been a white, Christian tool to subjugate and dehumanize.

It’s been a psychological and brutal weapon of destruction.

We know that in our heart of hearts.

That’s why we strained our voices in rebellion. You think that all of a sudden Black folks are going to start lynching ourselves?

That’s where you have us fucked up at.

We exhausted our bodies for freedom in the US. The human rights that are granted to all other people that Black people sought. The right to exist. The right to live. The right to prosper.

The right to be left the fuck alone.

We marched.

We protested.

We sung.

We kneeled.

Man, we even begged and still…

…and still have not succeeded in our efforts to protect young Black men like you from the jaws of the beast.

My heart breaks. My soul is in agony.

We know it could’ve been any one of us.

That at any moment or any day, holiday, or birthday, Sunday, there can be our silhouetted bodies hanging from the tree against the dusk of the oncoming night.

I can’t imagine those final moments.

I can’t imagine being too far away to cry for help.

Trapped in a game of “hunt the nig”

His mother will see those final photos. She’ll have to identify you. She’ll be forced into a position to be strong. She becomes yet another mother who had their child taken from them most viciously.

God.

Just a kid.

So much life unlived. Dreams cut short. Aspirations choked.

But we won’t let them forget you.

We’ll ride for you.

We’ll hashtag you.

We’ll put you on our timelines and our posts.

We’ll tattoo your name in graffiti.

We’ll put you in our music.

We live with that reality.

You will continue through us.

They hate us cuz they ain’t us.

Kyle Bassinga.

Rest in power.