Why won’t it work? The man shouted forcefully. He tried several restarts. He said Why isn’t this system working for me. After placing his appointment, all phone calls, and his rapidly cooling coffee on hold, his breathtaking displeasure and impatience rose by the minute.

Was this a virus, a Trojan horse, or something worse? Things like this don’t always start at one time, but an errant email opening or an unfamiliar link may not be noticed right away. It can begin a fateful process that culminates in total upheaval and disruption of normal operations, gradually over time as the worm takes over more of your computer system, expanding to contacts and thereby infecting their devices.

The Full Spectrum Of Our Potential,

In Acts 17:28 of scripture declares, ‘In Him (Our Creator) we live, we move, and we have our being.’ Within our Creator resides the full spectrum of our potential, a potential that, when free from the snares of detours, traps, temptations, and divisive lies, empowers us to authentically transform this world for the better. It is by trusting in truth, equity, respect, and brotherly love, even in the face of disagreement, that we find our humanity. It is through this kind of genuine humanity that the true democratic process is set in motion.

The God Of The Narrative

To the contrary, within the mechanisms of a so-called free society of a liberal representative democracy, a haunting evil exists, born of the use of acronyms, memes, innuendo, and algorithms that can live in the shadows of darkness. In this scenario, the narrative takes omnipotence, i,e, the story becomes God. Though much of the worship of the God of the narrative has been championed by the so-called sanctified (called apart), from the Negro Bible, The Curse of Ham, to the lie of Christian Nationalism, the church has often led the nation astray. This worldwide phenomenon, some 500-plus years old, is punctuated by its authoritarians from Columbus to Ponce de Leon, Hitler, Andrew Jackson, John Vorster, and beyond

Therefore, the mechanisms of the democratic system can become warped by distortion into believing a lie. American history sadly also documents a vacant moral/spiritual compass in the American church.

May 25, 2026, 6:11 AM EDT / Source: The Associated Press quotes Pope Leo, in his public apology, famously said, “It is impossible not to feel deep sorrow when contemplating the immense suffering and humiliation endured by so many in stark contrast to their immeasurable dignity… Yet neither can we deny nor diminish the delay with which both society and the church came to denounce the scourge of slavery. This constitutes a wound in Christian memory… For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon.” 

Until a catalyst introduces it into the world of broad daylight. That catalyst can so easily be seen in the return of authoritarian rule.

Reverse Racism

The silence of minority voices and the abstract idea that the influence of the social construct of race is a thing of the past mixes clandestinely with the intellectually bankrupt philosophy of reverse racism, which is an oxymoron within itself.

The Calgary Antiracism Education Cared (CARE) article entitled “The Myth of Reverse Racism” is quoted to say, “While assumptions and stereotypes about white people do exist, this is considered racial prejudice, not racism. Racial prejudice refers to a set of discriminatory or derogatory attitudes based on assumptions derived from perceptions about race and/or skin colour. Thus, racial prejudice can indeed be directed at white people (e.g., “White people can’t dance”) but is not considered racism because of the systemic relationship to power. When backed with power, prejudice results in acts of discrimination and oppression against groups or individuals. In Canada, white people hold this cultural power due to Eurocentric modes of thinking, rooted in colonialism, that continue to reproduce and privilege whiteness. It is whiteness that has the power to define the terms of racialized others’ existence. Tim Wise explains how, for white individuals,

The Great Cultural Interloper

Though this is a quote from Canadian journalism, the United States of America is the great cultural interloper, with its historical exportations of hate due to the power of afterlives, evidenced by nazi Germany and apartheid in South Africa, to name a few. It is no wonder the ghost has found afterlives breathed into it cold, scaly, petrified, and hollow lungs by political authoritarianism, philosophy combined with heartless grievance, and white grievance in particular. Yet in the spirit of this comprehensive June theme, Afterlives is not solely about what lingers—it is also about reckoning, exposure, and transformation.

Expose. Remove. Rebuild

The words “Expose. Remove. Rebuild.” serve as both warning and resurrection language. Before healing can occur, the hidden ghost must first be named. Taking a magnifying glass to the featured image of this article, we see the illustration challenges viewers to confront the uncomfortable truth that America’s future cannot be reborn while remnants of its past remain protected in darkness.

Responsibility

The screwdriver lying beneath the machine implies responsibility: dismantling injustice requires human hands willing to confront what is hidden inside the system. The question of the moment is “who is bold enough to pick it up and put it to use? Now, when you look at the American dilemma with its variable levels of racial bias, hatred, antiblackness, whiteness, and white supremacy, we must understand that it is not the machine or the mechanisms of our democracy that are flawed. There is a Ghost in the Machine; something thought to be dead has found an afterlife. Using those very systems meant to protect individuals, the ghost has been weaponized to attack and hurt the vulnerable marginalized communities of color. The mode of accomplishment manifests as attack, disenfranchisement, disqualification, dissolution, and discouragement.

Afterlives

Afterlives’ ghost in the machine has a name: Racism. Like a movie premiering one bad sequel after another, or the job on an office copy machine, the latter copies get worse and worse. You can almost hear the voices of those present and those past crying out in one shrill call for help/ayuda(Spanish), bika lishyeed (Navajo), as the masses of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) call out the American Democracy and ask the question. “Why isn’t it working?” (For Me)?

The Tension Between Death and Rebirth

Ultimately, the featured image of this article embodies the tension between death and rebirth that defines the June theme. It asks whether America is willing to let destructive legacies finally die, or whether society will continue carrying them into another generation’s afterlife. In that sense, this piece is not hopeless—it is prophetic. It suggests that exposing what haunts the machine may be the first act of liberation, allowing something more just, humane, and truthful to emerge from the ruins of what it once was. 

Additional Resources

Canadian Antiracism Education (CARED)

https://www.aclrc.com/issues/anti-racism/cared/the-basics-level-1/myth-of-reverse-racism

May 25, 2026, 6:11 AM EDT / Source: The Associated Press