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    “I’m Not Racist”—Says the Cowardly Racist

    By 08 Mins Read

    Yesterday, January 20, 2025, was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In a twist of fate that could only be written by Alanis Morrisette in the height of her angst, it was also the inauguration of the 47th president, who is also the disgraced, twice impeached, 34 times convicted and 45th president, because America is a glutton for punishment.

    At his inauguration, Trump’s favorite campaign financier and budding monopolist, Elon Musk, did the sieg heil salute, TWICE.

    You know, the one Hitler made a whole thing and MILLIONS of people followed suit. Many people defended Musk’s gesture, including the Anti-Defamation League, (you know the one that is set up to combat anti-semitism) by not only using his autism as an excuse, but claiming that he was actually giving a Roman salute, not a Nazi one. While the salute was once used by the Romans, it was adopted by Mussolini before Hitler took it over, for those who don’t know—Mussolini sucked, too. Why would anyone in good conscience want to associate themselves with anything so hateful? Unless, well, they were hateful. Why would a democratic government want a salute that was most recently popularized by FASCISTS at an inauguration?


    A few days ago, on Musk’s platform, I xweeted about Trump’s cabinet pick for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth’s tattoo being Nazi insignia, and man, so many people with bible verses in their bios call me all kind of R-words—the ones that start and end with r. I was put on so many lists so that they could specifically spam my account with hate by people who had love racist ideologies but hate being called racist, but why? Part of racism’s employment is based on the notion that its victim is not intelligent enough to realize they are being harmed. When racists gaslight Black people out of their experiences, it does not actually make said Black person believe that they were not harmed. The gaslighting is only a validation tool for another racist white person who has the same mindset and similar or more power to facilitate the continuation of it. To posit that Musk is some super genius that is going to change the world, doesn’t know that he is doing a Nazi salute, is nothing more than racists hoping you are dumber than they are.

    As white people with less education, sense, culture and wit than I have, called me stupid while defending white nationalists tattoos, I could not help but chuckle at their willingness to lie to themselves in order to hate me. Many commenters claimed that Pete’s tattoo is the Cross of Jerusalem (they never mentioned his other tattoo also associated with white nationalists groups), which is a Christian symbol that was even used at President Jimmy Carter’s funeral. Someone even questioned if I thought Carter was a Nazi, which I don’t, because things can have multiple uses. To not acknowledge that two things can be true or that a symbol can have multiple meanings, would be like only thinking of the Hindu symbol peace whenever you saw a swastika. If anything, it just proves that people who proport themselves as the master race lack originality in thought.

    If he was so focused on being a good Christian, he probably would not have defied Leviticus 19:28 and even gotten a tattoo in the first place, but that would mean being godly actually matters to the far-right, outside of wanting to be treated as such.


    This was not some attack on Hesgeth’s’s character, either.

    Pete, a former political commentator at Fox News, is a bigot and if a bigot espouses bigotry, why is that a problem to call it what it is? White people who defend the Petes and the Elons and the Donalds and the who-the-f*ck evers of the world, have a very low standard for what they would finally agree is racism, but sure know how to sniff out some when they think it is in the reverse. Pete does not like the idea of women or people who are openly gay in the military and has been vocal about the renaming of military bases that were named after Confederate Generals, (most specifically Fort Bragg, which was named after a loser ass loser Braxton Bragg) those things are examples of textbook bigotry.

    Sidenote, imagine your last name is Bragg. You literally only win ONE battle and still lost the war and then 160 years later, people who vocally oppose DEI have the nerve to say it’s wrong to change some sh*t named after you like you being a loser was actually inspiring? Still, that’s the thing, if you are white, you don’t have to be good at your job or be a good person to be immortalized and memorialized as both, almost two centuries later. You just had to loathe Black people enough to want to kill other white people. What would be Hegseth’s motivation be to keep Fort Bragg named the way it was, outside of honoring a man who literally fought for racism? Meanwhile Harriet Tubman was not only a Civil War spy, nurse and scout, she was the first woman to lead an armed military operation, a great liberator and even though she fought on the side that won—she still can’t even get $20 out of the U.S. government.

    MLK once said—you know, before he was murdered—“Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.”

    For many people, excusing Musk and Hegseth’s deplorable behavior allows them the self-courtesy of not having to evaluate their own erroneous ideologies or racist behaviors, and/or learn knew things. They would rather rely on the comfort of thinking they already know and therefore are already acting in accordance with what they deem is good and benevolent behavior. Shaming racists, specifically the kind who refuse to admit they are, would also disallow them the peace that comes with thinking everything they have, they rightfully earned and worked hard to achieve and that there was no help up or any bias involved in their success. Even if they were already rich or were a legacy admission or went to a good school in a good neighborhood, to them, the playing field is and was level and any misfortunes that befall marginalized groups, specifically Black people are simply their own fault or lack of work ethic.

    Coming to terms with someone else’s bigotry would require a lot of people to confront their own.


    It’s fascinating how Musk and Trump have emboldened racists to, once again, spew their rhetoric aloud but very few are bold enough to claim their racism other than OG Nazis, of course.

    What is the necessity in keeping your sinisterness a secret, if you espouse your ideologies so explicitly? Racists, who refuse to admit they are, recognize racism as behavior that is deserving of shame and claiming it would be them acknowledging their ideologies are f*cked up. If someone is facilitating a structure that has only white people in power, then they are in fact a white supremacist. Even the dumbest white supremacist banks on being smarter than the smartest Black person. They bank on the idea that marginalized groups, but especially Black people, are not smart enough to know what they see and that millions of us are misinterpreting oppression or even worse, lying about it.

    They assume their lack of knowledge is still more knowledge than the person who is indeed experiencing the oppression.


    According to the BBC, “Andrea Stroppa, a close confidant of Musk who has connected him with far-right Italian PM Giorgia Meloni, was reported by Italian media to have posted the clip of Musk with the caption: “Roman Empire is back starting from Roman salute”. The Roman Empire and The Third Reich both used those salutes. Both empires came to a crashing halt, one from hubris and lead poisoning and the other was squashed by other nations who realized white nationalism is bad, at least back then they did.

    Using either empire as a model is certainly a choice, specifically when you realize that one glaringly thing the Roman Empire and the Third Reich have in common is that it did not end well for Caesar or Hitler.

    May every tyrant receive his just hail.

    Kyla Jenée Lacey is an accomplished third-person bio composer. Her spoken word has garnered tens of millions of views, and has been showcased on Pop Sugar, Write About Now, Buzzfeed, Harper’s Bizarre, Diet Prada, featured on the Tamron Hall show, and Laura Ingraham from Fox News called her work, “Anti-racist propaganda.”. She has performed spoken word at over 300 colleges in over 40 states. Kyla has been a finalist in the largest regional poetry slam in the country, no less than five times, and was nominated as Campus Activities Magazine Female Performer of the Year. Her work has been acknowledged by several Grammy-winning artists. Her poetry has been viewed over 50 million times and even used on protest billboards in multiple countries. She has written for large publications such as The Huffington Post, BET.com, and the Root Magazine and is the author of "Hickory Dickory Dock, I Do Not Want Your C*ck!!!," a book of tongue-in-cheek poems, about patriarchy....for manchildren.

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