Last night I caught my friend Layla Saad’s post on [Rachel Cargle]() being censored by Instagram. Instagram’s an institution of white supremacy. I’m no longer surprised when any of these social media platforms go out of their way to usurp their own rules and distort their notion of “community guidelines” in an effort to silence us. 

But this was different. [The post that had been removed]() was a thread that was dedicated to Black Women grieving. Just grieving. Just being. Nia Wilson continues to weigh heavily on my heart. And while we say her name, she is joined (at a minimum and in the very recent past) by Diamond Stephens and MeShon Cooper. These are just the stories I’ve stumbled across on my own. The list of names is too long. What we’re being asked to feel is too much. And even in the presence of that? An instagram thread of Black Women crying and praying and grieving and loving was outside the scope of this platforms community standards? 

The only thing such a thread threatens is the forced ambivalence of white supremacy - they silence us because they cannot handle what we stand up and feel and witness and be with every fucking day. They are cowards to hide from this. They are complicit in the continuation of this. 

I’ve been broken a lot lately but this put me over the edge. Not only are we dehumanized. Not only are we taken. But we’re not even fucking allowed to feel anything about it? The images of tear gas thrust on grieving protesters will never stop haunting me. We ask them not to kill us and their IMPULSE is to punish us for the suggestion. 

Why? 

Because they’re afraid of seeing what we’re showing them. They’re afraid of what this grief would mean to them. They’re afraid of acknowledging what’s been done so that they can continue to be with their forced ambivalence. So they can remain broken and codependent on our suffering and our pain. Standing in a power that destroys them as they wield it.

Words in the image from “Standing in My Grief” the poem I stayed up writing last night.