I remember one of the first times someone denied my humanity. It was cruel — a bold-faced lie, told by an adult who had been newly welcomed into my family.
He lied. And someone I trusted — someone who should have protected me — believed him over me. Got me in deep shit.
And I remember how it felt. Like being attacked. Like I needed to defend myself, add context, explain. But nothing worked.
Because his lie controlled the scene. His lying ass watched me bleed for something he had done, and we both witnessed it with our own eyes — but lies told with confidence often win. For a while.
Power can dress itself in lies and still be welcomed, while the truth — especially from a young, trembling voice — can be discarded like it never mattered.
That moment didn’t just hurt — it carved something out of me.
It taught me two things I wish I never had to learn: That denying someone’s humanity is one of the worst things you can do to a person. And that being human does not guarantee being treated human — especially when someone decides you aren’t worth the dignity that makes being alive sacred.
II. Cardinal instinct
And yet here I am — years later — saying it aloud with no regrets: I will die denying the humanity of bigots and their counterparts.
Because I know what it feels like to be denied.
A racist, anti-this-and-anti that, a man whose name I never heard (and will not utter here either), face I never saw until his counterparts decided his death meant enough to plaster it all over the internet, trolling rage bait for sympathy and likes.
A man I never listened to, never followed — now lighting up my “For You” page just because it’s political and the algorithm knows those are some of the precious things I care about.
When nothing about him should be given the benefit of the doubt. When nothing he lived by was ever for me — or for you.
And now I’m supposed to shed my precious tears? Raise a flag to half-mast that my ancestors made possible because he’s gone from flesh now? No.
I’m not sad. I won’t mourn. I won’t use my freedom to honor no-count legacies.
I won’t grieve for lives consumed by hate — where their families who benefited from it smiled in pictures and left bad seeds in their children.
And no — my perspective isn’t cruelty. It’s clarity.
My Black-ass humanity is what it means to be born inherently empathic and still be microaggressively harmed over and over and over again.
It’s survival. It’s a cardinal instinct.
III. Loyalty is not redemption
One of my foster fathers was a racist bigot. I went to his funeral out of loyalty.
I sat among his family — a family I once loved, a family I still love in complicated, unspoken ways.
I cried at the slideshow where I was featured alongside him. I cried when I hugged his daughter.
Not because they deserved my grief, but because, once, we shared a bond — toxic, yes — but a bond nonetheless.
A hateful man with hints of kindness, so committed to his politics that his memorial table held a MAGA hat and “Back the Blue” flag like they were personal badges of honor.
He let me and my younger Black brother know exactly what he thought of people like us. Told us we couldn’t date outside our race. Said we would taint the white bloodline — every chance he got.
And still, I showed up when he died. Because that’s what loyalty taught me. Because the child in me didn’t know how to love halfway.
And still, I had nothing to say when they opened the mic. Just silence — the most honest thing I could offer him.
And now I know better. Now I refuse to pretend that love or family can redeem a racist bigot — not when the damage is generational and still happening.
That man didn’t just raise a family with an iron fist — he raised harm.
And that harm lives on in some of his children and their spouses —
the ones who asked why I stopped putting perms in my hair, why I chose a Black college, what I had against Paula Deen when “that lady was so good to Black people.”
The ones who called me an ungrateful foster child who didn’t know the blessings their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ had given me.
And no amount of memory can make that holy.
IV. A cosmic reckoning
And yet, people say we all return to love in the end. That when death comes, it brings grace, not judgment…
Every story I’ve ever heard from someone who nearly died ends the same way:
They say they felt an overwhelming sense of love. That in the afterlife, they melt into pure light. Pure grace. Pure love. No shame. No blame. Just love — and a remembrance of why they journeyed here in the first place.
A love that covers regrets, forgives wrongs, wraps them in light regardless of what they carried.
Maybe that’s true on the other side.
But that’s not the world we live in over here.
Over here, hatred still builds empires. Hatred moves freely. Hatred raises children. Hatred builds platforms and gets them funded by the government.
And beautiful children — like I once was — just trying to be loved — have had to survive a cruelty that still gets airtime. Gets lied on. Left bleeding. Hurting.
So no — I don’t want to “prayer warrior” or “Moodji Baba” my way out of this rage.
I don’t want to pretend I don’t hate the people who hurt my people.
I don’t want to be told forgiveness is the only path to healing.
I don’t want to be lectured about grace — when Grace is my first name. And all Grace ever needed was protection.
When hate is what activated this part of Grace in the first place.
V. Severance in the ethers — now that’s holy
And now that you are everywhere — stitched into every wound, every lie, every echo you left behind, woven into wind and earth and memory —
you do not get to rest. Not until you’ve reckoned for every seed of hatred you planted.
This isn’t just your burden to bear — it’s your debt to repay.
And now that you are part of the universe — dust, light, energy — you finally know the true nature of why you came here.
There is no way your mission in life was to spend your days fueling hatred instead of healing what needed love.
So you must carry that truth now.
I charge you — and your ancestors — and the ancestors of every racist bigot who ever lived: Return to this planet what you’ve willfully destroyed. Set in motion what you turned into stone and smoke.
You know damn well this reckoning is long overdue.
VI. Good bye, go get it right
Let love melt away our sins and consume us in the afterlife.
But here and now, I stay grounded in reality.
And to the ones who use their lives to spread hateful venom, to deny the humanity of people like me?
You are rotted from the inside. No — you die.
Good fuckin’ riddance.
If this piece spoke to you — or unsettled something in you — feel free to comment, share, or sit with it in silence. This is sacred work, but not polite work. That’s intentional.
Cause I always bend the rules. TheeAmazingGrace, summer 2025.
Lately, I’ve been on an emotional roller coaster. After finally requesting my childhood ward of the court records—records that have existed since I was five years old—I’ve been revisiting parts of my life with a different lens. I’m in a place now—after so much intentional healing—where I’m genuinely curious. I feel healthy in my pursuit and believe that knowing this information will only further my healing journey, my art, and the legacy I wish to be remembered for.
I remember bits and pieces, but trauma has a way of scattering time. These records, I trust, will help put into place the dates, the times, and the situations that have lived in my memory without order or clarity for years. The Department of Human Services (DHS) in Philadelphia gave me a difficult time over the last few years. They made my right to know—to access to my own history—feel like a battlefield. But recently, I found out I’ll finally be assigned a lawyer—someone who can help me get the information I’ve been asking for all along.
And what changed everything? They finally learned my mother’s name and date of birth—information they hadn’t asked for before. That one detail opened doors I’d been knocking on for years. It’s been emotional—and it’s also brought me some resolution. It made me think of this:
Just because we grew up impoverished don’t mean our minds ever were. Many of us saw so much too soon—or things we should’ve never been exposed to—yet we’ve carried the power to cultivate both the elevation of our existence and the orchestration of our own demise.
Crack cocaine stole my matriarch, just like I know it stole so many other lives. And that devastation wasn’t by chance. Reagan’s “War on Drugs” wasn’t a war on drugs at all—it was a war fueled by his hatred for Black people and poor neighborhoods like mine.
Thank you, Mama Nikki Giovanni, for giving us permission to: hate who we hate, and love who we love—and let it be known so. I want to be clear—my hatred for him, and the whole system that granted him permission to destroy us, is intentional. The hate I feel for him and his cohorts doesn’t come from a place of bitterness—because the creator made it possible for me to be a never-ending healing vessel and if I have it my way, I will continue to choose to be.
And I still hate him—on purpose—because I lived through the hatred and witnessed how he tried to slaughter us.
Policies that punished addiction instead of protecting the ones suffering from it. Foreign operations that opened the doors right into our bedrooms, flooding us out into the streets. Laws that criminalized our communities instead of healing them. Many of us who rise today from those same barbaric ashes are here because we know what it is to not just survive, but to live—and to tell our stories—in the face of real-life horror.
As I grow into my mature age, I’ve learned to genuinely not give a damn about what anyone thinks of me—or how I move through this life. I move with integrity in every interaction, as much as being human allows. Many moons ago, I learned hard lessons. I stopped being a bleeding heart, stopped bending to please others, especially when it meant dimming myself just to make them feel seen—more seen than they ever tried to make me feel.
I’m grateful I no longer concern myself with someone else’s skin, or how they choose to move in it. I’m rooted in my own.
My deepest wish for anyone reading this is that you find the strength to go into any space with your head held high—calm, unbothered, having a drink or a bite to eat, or simply reading a book and breathing without a single care about who’s watching or whispering.
Move with integrity. Carry the voices of your ancestors with you. Let them echo in every room you enter. Stop—if you can help it—from dimming your light just to make others feel seen. Because the truth is, no one can break you—not in this life. Even when they play in your face. Even when they think they’ve got you all the way fucked up.
They don’t. And they never will.
Shit! The day I break is the day I die—the day my body exits the planet. And even then, I’ll be more whole than ever before—an ancestor, returned to source.
To my mother, and the ancestors who move about with me—thank you for clearing paths I couldn’t see, for loving me beyond the veil, and for sending the healing exactly when I was ready to receive it.
Mommy, I hear you in every moment of clarity. That sweet, raspy, deep voice of yours still wraps around me. Your lullaby still sings: I can see clearly now, the rain is gone…
This is our story, too.
My mom, me, David, and Jeremiah at Grema Tussie house on Hazel Ave in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, circa 1986.
✨ Created + conceptualized by Gracie Nicole Berry | CowrieConscious™ ✨
Peace, y’all. This one’s been on my spirit—it’s a long one, but it’s time to let it breathe. Thank you for bearing witness to me, and to my perspective.
I didn’t write this to romanticize suffering.
I didn’t write it to perform Black pain either.
And I damn sure didn’t write this blog to weaponize the memory of Afrika in the Black community.
Too often, our remembrance is expected to bleed—to beg, to grieve, to suffer out loud so that others can try to understand it.
But what I carry and what carried me this morning—is something ancient, something deeper, and far more whole.
This is a story born of a dream.
A blood memory.
A message not steeped in sorrow, but in truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help us god.
Not in what was done to us—but in what lives through us.
The Afrika I feel in my bones is not frozen in pain.
She is radiant. She is rhythm.
She is beyond resilient wrapped in spirit.
And when she visits me—my ancestors visit too…they don’t visit to mourn.
They visit to remind me.
To steady me.
To call to me.
I woke up this morning, earthside, breathing and crying from a familiar song on my heart.
Not from sadness—but from knowing.
From remembering.
Something I didn’t live through—but that lives through me.
The dream wasn’t just a dream.
My ancestors came bearing a message—a charge, a call, a confirmation.
Had to hurry up and write it down when I woke up, but they said:
“Chile of our blood, keeper of our stories,
Don’t you forget. We are more than what was done against us. We are what we’ve become in the soul of it. Tell your story, baby. Tell ‘em how it hits you. How it moves through your spine and rattles your bones.
Tell ‘em, even if they ain’t ready. Shit, they might not never be ready.”
I lay there, between snot and saltwater, whispering
thank you, thank you, thank you
over and over again.
My ancestors sweet words made my crying ritual less about pain. It was about communion—a holy remembering. Their voices fed me good like a hot pot of oatmeal in the morning, sticks to the ribs all day.
Thank you for my Afrikanface and lineage. Thank you for trusting me with our ache and our beauty.
Thank you for trusting me with our memory and our brilliance.
Because I don’t imagine my Afrikan ancestors petrified in shame.
I see you crossed over into something whole.
I see you transcendent. Not only survivors of the unconscionable horror of the Maafa—our Afrikan Holocaust—
but as the Afrikan diaspora, builders of civilizations, cultivators of language,
lovers, rich in rhythm and reason. I feel you everywhere—in the marrow of my bones,
in my blood memory that carries you in it.
And when you show up?
You don’t come to grieve.
You come to guide.
To remind me that healing flows both ways.
That the line between ancestor and descendant is not a closed gate—but a living bridge.
I know you haven’t forgotten us.
You know we still carry what you could not finish. And when the moment calls—when the ache echoes—you return.
Not in sorrow.
But in strength.
You reach through time to steady us,
to move with us,
to remind us:
We are the continuation of your story—too sacred to die.
And With Remembrance Comes Responsibility
Because while I write from a place of reverence—for our ancestors, for the truth—they also left me with a charge: to protect the memory, not just feel it. To tell it whole. To stand guard over it. And that includes challenging and checking anything that distorts or dishonors it—even when it comes from within our own community. Let’s face it, we’re a community — not a single bulging rock of Gibraltar. But that doesn’t mean we let shit slide. Accountability matters for every Black person on this planet. Being real with each other — even when it’s hard — is how we grow. It’s how we heal, not just as individuals, but across generations. Together.
Lately, I’ve noticed a growing trend in our community around narratives that, while often framed as empowering or rooted in cultural pride, dangerously distort or outright deny the historical facts of what our people endured during the Middle Passage. We can’t afford to rewrite trauma into myths or pride into denial. Honoring our ancestors means confronting the full weight of that history by facing it honestly, not reshaping it to make ourselves more comfortable. And while I know some of these ideas come from a place of wanting to reclaim identity and autonomy, we have to be honest: some of this shit is deeply harmful, historically inaccurate, and unintentionally echoes the erasure we’ve fought so long to undo.
As Black Afrikan descendants — people whose brilliance and greatness were violently interrupted by one of history’s greatest crimes against humanity — we carry the living legacy of that trauma. Our ancestors, who built civilizations and inscribed wisdom into stone before others even knew how to write, were kidnapped, trafficked, raped, and enslaved through the transatlantic slave trade. And while that chapter may be behind us, its impact is not. It still lives in our bodies, our families, and our communities today.
To twist or deny that truth doesn’t uplift us — it endangers us. It fractures our connection to each other, to our history, and to the land that is inherently ours.
There’s a growing wave of trendy narratives in our community — ones that deny our connection to Afrika. “I’m not Afrikan, I’m Carribean .” “I’m not Black, I’m colored.” “I got Indian in my blood.” The message is the same: anything but Afrikan — even when the truth is written all over our faces and carried through our bloodlines.
You may have heard versions of this: “Black people were Indigenous to the Americas.” “We didn’t come from Afrika — we were already here.”
Some of us cling to other lineages to distance ourselves from Blackness — especially Indigenous ancestry. And while many of us do have Native roots, the reality is, Black people are often excluded from those very communities. Anti-Blackness exists there too. Claiming another identity doesn’t erase the legacy of the Middle Passage or the generational impact it left behind.
And on the flip side — there’s nothing wrong with having multiple ancestries. I do. I carry European ancestry through my father’s lineage — something I’m still working to unpack and reconcile with, especially given the history attached to it. But that’s a different story for a different day. The point is, many of us have mixed heritage. That’s not the issue.
The issue is: why is it always Afrikan that gets denied? Why is that the lineage treated as taboo, as something to escape or erase? That’s not pride — that’s colonization.
Even the idea that Afrikan people on the continent mistreat Black folks from the diaspora is often exaggerated, unstudied, and weaponized. That narrative is part of a larger agenda: to keep us disconnected. Because a disconnected people are easier to control, divide, and erase.
These narratives might feel empowering, but they don’t liberate us — they fragment us. Reconnecting to our Afrikan identity is not weakness. It’s healing. It’s truth. And we owe that to ourselves — and to our ancestors
The Truth Will Set Yo Ass Free Or On Fire. It’s Sacred Like That.
Yes, there is some scholarly debate that early Afrikan explorers may have had limited contact with the Americas before European colonization. What of it even without much evidence to back it up. That’s not the threat.
The real danger is when that conversation gets distorted—twisted into claims that chattel slavery didn’t happen as we know it, or worse, that Afrikan descendants in America have no direct connection to Afrika at all.
That’s not pride.
That’s not empowerment.
That’s erasure—plain and simple.
And here’s the hard truth:
We’ve always expected false supremacists delusion to erase us.
We’ve watched European institutions systematically steal, distort, and bury the truth about Black scholars, scientists, inventors, leaders, and entire civilizations since the beginning.
That erasure is nothing new. It’s part of their playbook.
But when it comes from within our own community—when we see Black folks resharing or reshaping false narratives that disconnect us from our ancestors, from the Middle Passage, from the truth of slavery—it does something even more devastating.
It harms us twice.
Once by repeating the erasure,
and again by making it harder to heal from it.
Because when the lie comes in a familiar voice, wrapped in cultural pride or spiritual language, it’s easier to let our guard down. Easier to believe. And far harder to undo.
That’s why naming it is important.
That’s why truth-telling is sacred.
And that’s why we must honor our ancestors fully—not just with candles and cloth, but with historical clarity and accountability.
Why This Matters
This kind of historical revisionism might sound empowering on the surface, but in practice, it harms us in very real ways:
It erases our ancestors’ suffering and resistance. Pretending the Middle Passage didn’t happen, or minimizing it, dishonors the generations who endured and resisted brutal conditions so that we could exist today.
It severs our connection to Afrika. We’ve already had our languages, names, and cultures stripped away—so doubling down by disowning what remains of that connection is deeply damaging to our collective unity.
It undermines the fight for reparations. If our history is erased or rewritten, how can we demand justice for what was done?
It creates confusion that empowers oppressive systems. Muddled narratives about Black people make it easier for those wielding power to avoid accountability. And that confusion isn’t new—it’s by design.
Historical Erasure Is Political
Historical erasure isn’t passive. It’s not accidental. It’s political — and it’s been weaponized time and time again against Black people. But what’s often overlooked is that this erasure doesn’t only come from outside forces. Sometimes, it happens within our own communities. And even though the forms of erasure differ in power, in context, and in consequence, both must be named. Both must be held accountable.
False supremacy has always relied on erasure to justify itself. From textbooks that reduce slavery to a footnote, to museums filled with Afrikan artifacts stolen and displayed without context or credit — the project has always been to strip Black people of our humanity, our histories, and our contributions. And those artifacts haven’t just been inanimate objects. They’ve included real Black people — human beings treated as curiosities and exhibits. Saartjie Baartman, a Khoikhoi woman from South Afrika, was paraded and displayed across Europe in the early 19th century as a spectacle emphasizing distorted and racist ideas about her body and race, her image used to justify pseudoscientific claims of racial hierarchy. Her remains were kept in a museum for nearly two centuries before being finally returned to her homeland in 2002, where her body was laid to rest. El Negro, a young man from southern Afrika — likely Botswana or South Afrika, had his remains stolen in the 1830s by French naturalist Jules Verreaux, who taxidermied him like an animal and put him on display. Initially, his stuffed body contained his original skull and several arm and leg bones. He was exhibited in the Darder Museum of Banyoles in Catalonia, Spain. Specifically, it was exhibited in the museum’s natural history section for over a century as a colonial curiosity before his remains were returned to his home of South Afrika and given a proper burial in 2000. This is erasure by dehumanization, by objectification, by institutional violence.
An 1830 illustration by George V. T. depicting Saartjie Baartman, an enslaved woman from South Afrika, based on descriptions before photography, showing ‘steatopygia’—a trait racist science exploited to justify colonial stereotypes.Postcard from the late 1970s or early 1980s showing El Negro on display in Spain, late 20th century — a taxidermied Black man stolen from South Afrika in the 1830s. A haunting symbol of colonial violence and racial dehumanization.
Black inventors, freedom fighters, scholars, builders, and artists have all been systematically removed from the dominant historical narrative. In their place, a sanitized version of history is sold — one where white figures are centered, heroic, and civilized, and everyone else is peripheral or disposable. That kind of erasure isn’t just about ignorance — it’s about control. If you erase someone’s past, you disempower their present and limit their future. It becomes easier to criminalize Blackness when you erase its brilliance. Easier to gentrify a neighborhood when you erase who built it. Easier to justify inequity when you erase the systems that created it.
But erasure isn’t something we’re immune from doing ourselves. Within our own communities, there’s sometimes there can be a reluctance to embrace Afrika, or even a complete denial of it. A rejection of the continent as ours — whether from pain, miseducation, shame, or the psychological trauma of displacement. But when we deny that connection, we participate in a quieter kind of erasure. We erase our ancestors. We erase the rich cultural lineages that false supremacy tried to sever. We lose access to the pride, resistance, and beauty that existed long before colonialism or the transatlantic slave trade. And that too has consequences.
We can’t afford to let these forms of erasure — external or internal — go unchecked.
Yes, the violence and legacy of yt historical erasure is more systemic, more resourced, and more deliberately constructed. It’s reinforced by governments, schools, media, and cultural institutions. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t interrogate our own narratives too. If we want liberation, we need to recover truth — all of it.
Accountability must move in every direction. Not to shame, but to build. To rebuild. To remember who we are and where we come from — fully.
Because every time history is erased, a lie is told. And if we don’t fight those lies with truth, someone else will write a story that doesn’t include us at
When “Progress” Becomes Performative
Just like the misleading historical narratives, we also need to talk about the performative progress we see in systems claiming to support us. Take terms like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (D.E.I.) or Critical Race Theory (C.R.T.)—they sound dope and revolutionary on the surface. Cute-Catchy. Academic. Progressive. But who actually benefits?
Too often, these frameworks become elitist, inaccessible, and disconnected from the lived realities of everyday Black people. They’re wrapped in corporate language and filtered through institutions that continue to harm the very communities they claim to uplift.
What we really need? To call that racist shit what it is, and to hold those racist beasts accountable for the irreparable damage they continue to cause. We don’t need more buzzwords, panels, or watered-down training modules that let racist systems and their people off the hook. On the surface, it looks like progress. But honestly? Progress for who? To me it’s a band-aids on bullet wounds. Distractions. Decoys. Pretty lil’ lies dressed up in inclusion and equity with kente’ cloth on it.
From Iron Brands to Barcodes—How Corporate “Diversity” Echoes A Violent Legacy
We’ve seen this before. Y’all saw how Target played in our faces—slappin’ Blackness and queerness onto products for profit. Pan-Afrikan flags and rainbow pride put on T-shirts, mugs—you name it. That’s what I call visibility without ja plan for justice. Identity without a plan for liberation. It’s branding, exploitation with no empowerment. It’s a lack of organization and mobilization.
And speaking of branding—let’s talk about how violent that legacy really is. Back in 1710, if you encountered an enslaved Afrikan owned by the Royal African Company (RAC)—an English mercantile company chartered in 1672 to trade along the West Afrikan coast—you would witness a brutal system firsthand. The RAC held a monopoly on English trade with Afrika, initially focused on gold but later primarily involved in capturing and selling enslaved Afrikans. This company played a major role in the Transatlantic slave trade, transporting more enslaved Afrikans to the Americas than any other single institution. To mark their human property, they seared the letters ‘RAC’ into the chests of enslaved people using branding irons like the ones pictured below—similar to those used for cattle.
Branding irons once used to mark enslaved Afrikan people in the Americas.
This violent practice extended beyond the RAC. Plantation owners across the Americas adopted branding as a method of control and dehumanization. Take for instance a colonial beast named Volsey B. Marmillion from Louisiana. He and other plantation beasts like him didn’t just tax our ancestors’ heads like livestock—they branded them like livestock, too. Literally. They burned their initials, family crests, and imperial symbols into Black flesh like a cattle’s raw hide. Marmillion branded his initials—VBM—into the forehead of an enslaved Afrikan man he owned name Wilson Chinn, to mark ownership over him. A human being, reduced. Branded like cattle. Treated like cargo.
Wilson Chinn, a Branded enslaved Afrikan man in Louisiana, 1863
That wasn’t just ownership.
That was complete annihilation.
Barbarism.
Unconscionable.
A crime against humanity so vile, that I will always hate them, that I will always wish for them to be shot in the morning for betraying my people. I digress.
We Are Not Just Descendants of Pain—We Are Architects of Power
We carry their knowing. Their fire. Our people are the mathematicians of Timbuktu. The master builders of Kush and Kemet. Like I said earlier, we carved stories into stone before others learned to write. We mapped the stars while empires crawled and crumbled. We are scholars. Scientists. Griots. Birthing experts of the world’s most sacred knowledge. Black genius didn’t begin in struggle—it was interrupted by it. To be Black is to be a vessel of ancient intelligence. To be Black is to be a living archive of sacred, intellectual, artistic, and spiritual wealth.
Our creativity is our resistance. Our joy is our protest. Our memory is our legacy.
Truth Is Our Sheild—Not Just Against Lies, But Against Forgetting
Black people have always resisted—even if you’ve got Kanye Wests claiming we didn’t, even saying Harriet Tubman never existed, as if he was there beside her in the fight. That kind of revisionist talk isn’t just false—it’s betrayal.
One of my poems, from my first solo collection I’m working on, answers that. It traces how we’ve resisted—spiritually, physically, culturally—since the moment of capture. It doesn’t just remember the truth. It proves it with facts. Resistance is in our blood, our breath, our bones. We’ve always resisted and loved in the catastrophe of it. Created too. Reimagined. Taught. Reclaimed. We are here because they endured.
The Maafa is not the whole story—but it is part of the truth we refuse to let die. False theories that erase the transatlantic slave trade don’t just erase our pain. They erase our resilience. They erase our power to transform tragedy into art, to spin suffering into sovereignty. These stories rob us of our full inheritance—one paid for in blood, yes, but also in brilliance.
We Are Not Just the Wounded—We Are the Healers
It’s easy to forget that we birthed civilization itself. That Afrika is not just the cradle of life—but the creature of mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, literature, law-you name it. We, the descendants of the Afrikan Holocaust, are also the descendants of creators. We’ve birthed so much life—spiritually, culturally, artistically—that it literally informs the entire planet. That’s why I always say: our steez is a spiritual. We are not only the hurt—we are the healers. We are the chain breakers. We are the restorers, the rememberers, the revolution that is now televised.
We stay in the struggle not just for historical accuracy—but for spiritual integrity. We are more than suffering. More than trauma. We are sacred. We are scholars. We are sovereign. And this is why false pride and supremacy can’t build their own tables, they have to steel yours. Folks don’t get to remix our grief for clout. Don’t get to delete the names of stolen Afrikans just ‘cause the truth will burn them alive. Reparations aren’t optional. Justice is not theoretical. The restoration of Black dignity begins with the telling of the full story. And we must tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help us god.
Reclaiming Our Story Is Reclaiming Our Power
We must uplift the voices of scholars who center Afrikan truth—not those who flatten or erase it. If you can’t decolonize it, burn that shit to the ground—books and all.
All the divine doulas, barbers giving fades and mentorships, street corner griots pushin’ pen to paper, freedom singers, hood therapists holdin’ group sessions at the corner store. We are still pouring libation and practicing liberation—on buses, in boardrooms, behind registers, drum circles, in pulpits, at protests, in prisons, in prayer—even the brotha without a home, walking back-and-forth from the street to the sidewalk, whispering to his ancestors. What some call madness, we recognize as masked medicine—a spiritual gift misread by a world that’s forgotten how to listen. He’s not lost; he’s in ceremony. A living altar between realms. So leave that man the hell alone.
Black excellence is not void.
It’s the shadow.
It’s ancestral.
What We Must Do Is Use Our Collective Memories to Heal Now
Again, the Afrikan Holocaust is not the beginning of our story—it was a brutal interruption. But it could never erase us.
We are not ghosts of stolen people—we are here, writing blogs and singing our songs, guardians, a living legacy. So when I use the popular phrase, Put some respect on our names—I don’t just mean respect our pain. I mean…
Put respect on our power.
Put respect on our breath.
Put respect on our possibility. Put respect on our contributions,
Put respect on our compassion,
Put respect on our clarity,
Put respect on our cosmic knowing.
Because we’re here—in living color, building every dream we want. Master teachers and master students. Creating more life. Restoring to wholeness what was once fragmented. Thriving in the face of every force designed to erase us.
And with that respect comes deep responsibility. As individuals, we must:
Speak the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Honor our ancestors by preserving their stories, not rewriting them.
Support reparations, both legislative (like H.R. 40) and grassroots.
Challenge misinformation, especially online.
Reclaim Afrika, not as a distant myth, but as an integral part of our identity, our source, our center, our home.
Healing From Our Collective Memory—and Why Reparations Matter: My Final Peace
The trauma of the Middle Passage and the Maafa isn’t a myth or some distant history lesson—it’s on record, a living wound in our collective memory. It runs deep in our bones, in our soul, in the stories passed down from generation to generation. Healing from that kind of pain can’t happen when we keep pretending it didn’t happen or when we allow false narratives to cloud the truth of our people.
This trauma is real, and it’s not just in the past. It shows up today as what Dr. Joy DeGruycalls Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS)—the deep, generational trauma passed down from centuries of brutal oppression. PTSS helps explain some of the violence and dysfunction in Black communities—not as an excuse, but as a starting point to understand why healing is so critical.
When we see cycles of violence or struggle in our neighborhoods, it’s not because of that’s who we are—it’s because of what we’ve been forced to carry for hundreds of years. The pain of being stolen, dehumanized, and disconnected from our roots still echoes today. But knowing this isn’t about blaming—it’s about breaking the cycle. It’s about starting the real work of healing together.
And that healing requires more than words; it requires tangible action-Reparations. Reparations aren’t just about money or politics—they’re about restoring rightful order. Returning what was stolen: our dignity, culture, history, and place in the world. True reparations begin with truth—no sugarcoating, no denial. Because healing starts with honesty.
It doesn’t matter that yt people today may not know exactly which of their ancestors committed these atrocities, or that they themselves didn’t directly participate or have no responsibility in it at all—the reality is one of us exists as descendants of those whose ancestors inflicted grave and lasting harm, and descendants on the other side who are still recovering from that damage. Afrikans born in America live alongside people whose last names were forced on them—names that carry the weight of stolen identity—further immersing us in this cesspool of inherited trauma and injustice.
Meanwhile, Black people have yet to receive the full reckoning, apology, or reparations that other groups—like First Nations peoples, who have secured land rights and formal apologies for colonization; Holocaust survivors, who received reparations from Germany for genocide; Australian stolen children, who were officially acknowledged and compensated for forced removals; and displaced Chinese Americans, who received a formal apology and reparations for the Chinese Exclusion Act—have been granted, often gleefully with “cherries on top.”
Reparations aren’t just about money or politics—they’re about restoring rightful order. Reparations are a real, material commitment to righting historical wrongs—not just symbolic words. They turn talk of justice into action, revealing where a nation’s values—and heart—truly lie. You can’t claim to care about justice without investing in the repair of the people harmed. Words may acknowledge the pain, but reparations put your money where your mouth is. Real care requires real commitment—because dignity, responsibility, and love demand more than cheap talk.
When we say “Black Afrikans were stolen—and must be restored,” we’re speaking of more than survival. We mean reclaiming the power to thrive—physically, financially, spiritually, and culturally. It’s about repairing our roots, healing our lineage, and moving forward whole.
Our ancestors fought for us to be here—not just alive, but alive with purpose, creativity, and strength. Reparations are a way to honor that fight by investing in our communities, preserving our stories, and rebuilding what centuries of oppression tries to destroy.
Healing isn’t just an individual thing—it’s collective. It’s about all of us, together, facing the full story. When the truth about the Middle Passage is denied or erased, it stops the healing. It keeps the wound open, the trauma alive. That’s why reparations are more than a policy—they’re a pathway to collective freedom. We don’t need charity or pity. We need justice and restoration. And we won’t stop demanding it—not for guilt, but because it’s right and necessary for us to heal and reclaim our future.
So yeah, telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help us god—even the parts that might stop some hearts—is how we honor our ancestors, respect our present, and protect our future. Because sometimes, to be truly reborn, we gotta face the most visceral truths to set out souls free.
The history of a people can’t be eradicated.
Black people were there. Black people are here. Black people are in the future.
Dat smack woulda cost me my freedom. Wouldn’ta been funny if it were you or you or me. Woulda been no excuses. No protection. Woulda been the end of the world as we know it. Woulda perpetuated generational trauma. Woulda slapped cuffs on wrists like barbed wire. Woulda weighed me down in the wata like dem kluckas did Emit. Woulda lit me on fire while still breathing. Woulda knocked my teeth out cold. Woulda stuffed me inside undersized cell blocks. Woulda had me behind barz and guilty, behind barz with no pity, behind barz and awaiting trial, behind barz wishing on a stall, behind barz and chanting sad, sad, same songz of freedom #freemyniggaGrace
Dat smack reeked of privilege. Dat smack woulda took my dignity. Woulda took my livelihood. Woulda got me lynched where I stood.
Dat smack exposed a bloody nerve. Dat smack showed that we all just babies learning to crawl. Dat smack was deafening like our ancestors wildest screams as their bodies muffled the sounds before hitting the ocean floor. Or the haunting splash of salt wata up against the sides of those wretched ships carrying precious Black cargo-precious Black carnage.
Dat smack caused blunt forced trauma to my innards. Cut me deep to my heart so sad and swift. Suffocated me like a hot wind.
And fuck you if you say that smack made ALL BLACK PEOPLE LOOK BAD. We are a community not a cult. That smack revealed a painful truth we all done had. Showed, there’s more ways to grow than just one. Almost got wrapped up in the hype. Called on my ancestors for a lil heart to heart-a lil Black light. They reminded me of the powers in my lineage-Girl Real With Her Vintage. Me being one of the matriarchs to start healing thang. They say, “Tend to yo wounds. Heal the lows, vibrate through the noise cause ain’t no recoverin’ from bleeding to death.” —TheeAmazingGrace
Moko Jumbie for the codes in his fabric are one of protection, life lessons, cautionary tales and superstitions prevalent in the American South. It’s the 5th mask I made in the Antebellum Tribal Afrikanface Collection. I feel like my art instinctively connects to my past and to my loved ones. Moko Jumbies are stilt walkers. Moko means healer from central Afrika and Jumbie means ghost/spirit from the West Indies that may have come from the Kongo language word zumbi. Moko is also said to be a Yoruba Orisha God of retribution. Moko Jumbies are also thought to have come from West Afrikan tradition brought to the south by those in the Caribbean.
This mask is likely my favorite because it resonates with the energy and spirit of my ancestor and brother David Berry. I feel the same energy of protection, sacredness and timelessness. A presence strong, bold and statuesque just like my brother was in this life and most certainly is an ancestor in ethers. Check out my process in the images below. Now on view @pavaagallery.
I don’t know what to call this one, but I know it has something to do with cowrie consciousness and the Orisha Ogun. This mask is the 6th mask I made in the Antebellum Tribal Afrikanface Collection.
Sometimes when we create a work of art messages and meaning don’t always show up in the beginning. I didn’t know the story in her fabric would be connected to Ogun until earlier this week after reading a summary from “Surfaces: Color, Substances, and Ritual Applications on African Sculpture”. I was in awe that I somehow channeled all of the colors associated with Ogun. Literally, even down to the deep black of her face. It was a pleasant surprise to read line after line, tapping in deeper and deeper, but then again this work is spiritual so it makes so much sense. Ogun has been an impactful energy in my life from his inspiration from the Shadowkeepers & Roothealers exhibit at Amtrak. According to Yoruba creation mythology, Ogun led the orishas to Earth and helped them survive and adjust. He cuts paths through all thickets and obstacles with his machete. Ogun is a culture hero: he taught people ironworking like that of railroads etc., as well as magical and spiritual rituals, hunting and warfare. Now on view @pavaagallery.
I call her AfroDalit, for the story in her fabric was sourced from India. The 4th mask I made in the Antebellum Tribal Afrikanface Collection. I created this piece, one to show that Afrikans live all over the world and two to correlate shared experiences of the oppressive caste systems of Afrikans born in the American South to those born in India like (the Siddi” descendants of the Bantu people and the “Afro Dalit” better known as the “untouchables” of India who are darker skinned Indonesians).
Did you know that Dr. Martin Luther King and his wife once visited the land of Mohandas Gandhi in 1959? After being introduced by another distinguished person as a fellow “untouchable”, he was at first offended. However, story has it that he began to think about the 20,000 Black people he was fighting for in the US, people consigned to the lowest rank for centuries, smothered by poverty, quarantined in isolated ghettoes, and exiled in their own country. He then said, “Yes, I am an untouchable, and every negro in the United States of America is an untouchable.” In that moment, he realised that the land of the free had imposed a caste system not unlike the caste system of India, and that he had lived under that system all of his life. And the irony is that still happening today. Now on view @pavaagallery!
Gracie Berry Ancestor Tones,February 2021 Mixed-media on cardboard, 7×7
I was commissioned by Music for Everyone to create original artwork that will be paired inside the sleeve of a record that will feature a speech by Frederick Douglass titled, The Hypocrisy of American Slavery, for their Songs for Justice project.
Thoughts on the speech: I interpret Frederick Douglass’ speech, The Hypocrisy of American Slavery, as a battle roar that ironically mirrors too many experiences faced on a global level by Black communities today. However, the biggest lie taught in our worlds history that must be unlearned is the delusion of white superiority and being afraid of the dark. These times may be many things, but certainly not dark.
About the piece: I named the piece, Ancestor Tones because I want to pay homage to melanin. All shades of Black skin are vibrant, biological reflections of nature and the universe. In fact, the very cosmology of enslaved Afrikan people and their descendants is a form of universal wealth. It’s an unspoken truth and inherent birth right, no matter how one was born into it. Ancestor Tones explores themes of Afro-futurism connecting past, present and future. I think of Frederick Douglass as an Afro-futurist because he paved the way as a community educator and revolutionary for the Black people of his time. Not to mention he was the most photographed human-being of the era. He embodied what reimagining a Black future looked like by the way he controlled the narrative of his Afro-diasporic experience of the day. And continues to inspire generations in modern times. Take Amanda Gorman for instance, the youngest Black inaugural poet in American history. She credits Frederick Douglass with teaching her how to use technology for social justice. She reminds us of how intentional he was about capturing a counter-image to the Black American stereotypes at the time and how important that message is in her own work. You’ll notice hints of red and gold, a symbol for Amanda Gorman on Inauguration Day. The glow of her young, gifted and Black spirit, shining so much bigger than her body. Center to deep, Black, shadowy cowrie shells, wool and cotton, symbols of the million and one ancestral spirits surrounding her, journeying with her as she reclaims her humanity.
I wrote this after George Floyd was taken from here. All his motherly ancestors channeled me to write. All the mothers conjured up through. Cause even in death he called on his mother. The power in wailing her name was battle cry that had to be answered by every motherly energy that ever was. Thank God for his breath, his last words stained into the fabric of the universe. He didn’t give those cowards the power they were seeking. And that’s why I always say we don’t have to acquiesce, even in death. Watermelon is a poem to my people for my people. Break dem gotdamn curses. And stay in the struggle.
GirlrillaVintage the Blog 