It’s 11:59 PM; revelers dot the avenues in each of the well-known and obscure taverns and watering holes. What’s the occasion, Marti Gras, the Superbowl celebrations? It could be, or it may be, it’s just another ordinary Saturday night in metro or rural America. 

On this night, one particularly broad and boastful man, full of himself and plenty of alcohol, makes a score for the latest powerful narcotic. Under the light at a table just inside his next stop, he finds a sparkly-eyed vixen, who arrests his attention during this already infectious night.  

Morning arrives; however, it seems different. He opens bruised eyes to see an apartment ransacked and ravaged. He extends his hand into the open drawer of the nightstand next to his bed, now in shambles. Feeling throughout brings to him the realization that his wallet is gone. A hint of perfume remains in the room. The door of his dwelling is open. His eyes race to find the clock; he sees that it is now 11:59 AM the next day.

The horror of the Drug-induced Blackout halts his world. Robbed, beaten, He questions where do I go, what do I do, and what in the heck did I do last night? What determines our future is predicated upon our past.

His identity can best be described as a place. He’s America. At the beginning of Black History Month, America is at risk of a drug-induced blackout. School Boards and State legislatures nationwide are Drug-induced to blackout America’s dark history of racism, white supremacy, misogyny, and privilege.

Cynt Marshall, the Dallas Mavericks CEO, offers this definition in an acronym. D.R.U.G.

D. Define it: 

R. Recognize it: 

U. Uproot it

G. What does God say about it.

Cynt Marshall Rightnow Media “Divided No More-Systemic Bias Favors Whiteness” 

Hidden within its complexity exist the mechanisms to defuse it. The “It” is Systemic Racism, the Drug of choice for America’s 400-year wild night on the town. We must “Define/Clarify it.” Denying it only empowers its systems, extrapolating into today’s broken, battered, and ransacked nation of division.  

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide” John Adams.

 Recognizing it”  and “Uprooting it” begin in our education systems. Critical Race Theory (CRT) scare tactics distract from the real crisis of Systemic Racism. Many of CRT’s nomenclatures frame educational vocabulary, i.e., “race is a social construct and not biologically supported,” “microaggressions,” and “white privilege,” to name a few. 

Such terminology forensically examines some underpinnings of American society. Deceased political strategist Lee Atwater said: 

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

CRT is the latest way to say “Nigger” and use white fear to maintain power. 

The hint of perfume describes a paternalistic society that reaks of exploitation vs. an Awakening America. Finally, we need say nothing more than “The 1619 Project.” The mistreatment of its Pulitzer prize-winning Author Nikole Hannah-Jones embodies the intersectionality of blackness and femininity. Will we go back, or will we finally Uproot Systemic racism? 

Ultimately, “What does God Say?”

“But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going because the darkness has blinded them.” 1Jn 2:11

By Kevin Robinson Founder/Editor, Publisher of Three-Fifths Magazine