“I’m being called on in my life to love people and to protect people and to be a river to my people. I know, to do what we do, you’ve got to be able to take abuse. You got to be able to have people talk crazy about you. In this business, you’ve got to be able to have people disrespecting you, and you’ve got to smile, you’ve got to pretend like that’s OK.”

Nope. Nope my brother you do NOT need to pretend that it is okay. Pretending is detrimental to your mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional health. Wake up calls live in truth. Faithful is the slap of a friend, but an enemy multiplies kisses. Now I don’t know that it needed to be an actual box in the face like you delivered tonight, and I surely understand why you delivered a solid wake up call to Chris Rock’s foolish mouth.

The thing is that this slap was the boiling over of all the pent up rage that you carry from making the privileged people laugh so that they’re comfortable with your “blackness”. Let that shit go brother. Stop trying to make them laugh so that you can be in the same room with them. Use your words. Speak the truth. And let a few rip like King Richard did when they tried to use him for their personal gain. No resentment. No bitterness. All love and truth.

This isn’t the devil trying to get you when you’re on top, like Denzel said. This is your soul trying to find the true freedom that boils in your heart.

Your anger is the perfect response to sitting in a room full to the brim with toxic positivity. Next time deliver a more solid verbal slap full of truth. I am here for that.

Last night’s incident is the compounding effect of being repeatedly infantilized and made to feel helpless in a system where Will Smith also felt that to survive he had to engage with toxic positivity – keep them laughing he said, because there is no racism when a person is laughing. Inaction as a child and inaction throughout adulthood. Being Richard Williams broke through that shell of toxicity. It was a beautiful thing. Though he should have used words, that slap hopefully jolted North America awake!

And this is why I will continue to say do not piss on my head, and try to convince me that it is rain. I do not need an umbrella, you need to aim at the toilet. However, I will protect myself with God’s healing love while calling you out on your piss!

Chris Rock took the slap, that I hope shook every single one of us out of the stupor of toxic positivity.

These are some of the personal experiences that helped me to wake up and live in reality in that agonizing battle to stay in love

1. Wondering why someone as intelligent as I am not working for YOU when I am already working for myself
2. Seeing Afrocentric and BIPOC minds and bodies used to diversify your personal and professional portfolios on the surface, so that you can access pseudo-progressive mental, social, and economic profit
3. Experiencing and watching Afrocentric and BIPOC being gaslit with toxic unaddressed unconscious racism and classism, by being told that we are defensive while you continue to piss on us with your privilege
4. Forcing us to either continually stop to use our already stretched energy to filter your toxicity through healing lenses to integrate our experiences as love, or
5. Forcing us to pretend that all is well while we assimilate your pure toxicity into our systems

Hopefully Will Smith, given the gift of having his toxic positivity broken open by Richard Williams, shook every single unawakened soul awake to reality last night which was indeed the “greatest night ever in television”.

Where do we go from here? I am commending your heart into God’s hands so that you can begin the exodus that will finally free love. And I know that He will help you to figure out why you were able to slap Chris, while making yourself a clown in other spaces.

I feel deep gratitude, Brother Will, that your anger in this moment was stronger than your initial toxic smile. I am sending you love as you continue to heal in support of your calling to be the River that leads your people to freedom.

God has given us NOTHING but angels to guide us back to being whom we really are! Wake up!