I've talked with people who argue that they should be allowed to have the sort of conversations that might offend people because if someone is offended, they don't have to be part of it. It's a seductive idea, but it won't

The numbers on their face for the @FCC RDOF auction are exciting - lots of Gigabit winners. But it’s important to remember the job is just starting. These rural areas don’t magically get Gig today or tomorrow. 1/

The job is only done and the celebration can really only begin once we see that rural Americans are actually going to get the broadband they’ve been promised. 2/

And that’s the rub here - at least from preliminary indications, there are LOTS of question marks clearly hanging out there once you look past the gloss and proclamations. And since we won’t know for maybe 5 years if it worked, due diligence is essential now. 3/

A number of big winners have offered some service but never done Gig. This would be like giving hundreds of millions of $ to firms that have repaved residential streets to now design & build our interstate highway bridges. 4/

A number of big winners are using tech that has done Gig (maybe) only in tightly controlled applications that don’t look anything like rural America. This would be like giving interstate highway $ to firms who’ve built lots of scale models but never actually built a bridge. 5/

MY RACIST

If U remember from an earlier post I brought up Sen Elizabeth Warrens remark that "Obama did more for Wall Street than Main Street." I concur. U can ignore poor black people all day, but under no circumstance can U ever ignore poor white

Now Biden must be careful not to repeat the same mistakes of Obama. Biden most go big & go big fast. Fuck inflation. Order the treasury to start printing money. You will not beat Trump by impeaching or prosecuting him. You must beat him on the battlefield of ideas & you do so by-

helping the people he ignored. People with good jobs, food on the table & a roof over their head dont have time to do insurrections. If U help these people, you will choke off the fuel to Trumpism. Some black people will criticize me for taking this approach. My simple retort is-

you can't out-violence white people. We don't make guns. We don't make bombs. We don't make shit. You have to make it such that everyone eats. Otherwise you have to deal with the warning Heather McGhee lays out in her new book: white

Obama did not get this. He made it such that only rich white oligarchs got to feast. Everyone else got crumbs. I need you to get precisely what peace requires. There are a good number of white people in this country which would rather burn this country down than to allow any-

As many of you know, I was apart of the white evangelical tradition. I have talked about things I learned about being Black in white spaces. Now I want to say some things about what I learned about once being a Black evangelical returning back to the Black church.

A thread.

Spending years in white evangelical churches and schools, specifically from 2012-2018, shapes Black people in more ways than we would like to admit. It shapes us to diminish Blackness, devalue our people’s story, and always test what we have against the white logic and litmus.

This is particular reality for us Black men in that space. White Christians exploit our vulnerabilities, give us the room to speak, while simultaneously subverting and devaluing Black women and their struggles and their grievances. Opportunities abound for us and we take them.

We are invited into the meetings, we are given the mic, we are asked to lead groups on race, the Black church, etc. We are asked though often we actually haven’t read or thought deeply about each. We become a weapon. Profiting and policing/punishing those who get out of line.

All the while, white Christians feel good about themselves and other Black people are left to clean up the mess we’ve made, the ways we’ve made fools of Black folk, and the harmful ways we’ve learned to think, and to preach, and to be around us. It is profoundly depressing.