BIPOC Is The New Ni**er
Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s troubles began when she was just three months old.
Her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, was convinced that Gypsy had sleep apnea and took her to the hospital for tests. When doctors found nothing wrong, Dee Dee self-diagnosed her daughter with a chromosomal defect that required her to use a walker. And when she got into a minor motorcycle accident at age 7, a wheelchair.
“You need to use this from now on,” Dee Dee told her.
As Gypsy’s plight began to attract financial support, Dee Dee invented more and more conditions, which justified putting her daughter on more and more medications. Some of which caused symptoms that were passed off as new disorders.
Seizures caused by the medication were diagnosed as epilepsy, a loss of appetite justified a permanent feeding tube, dental problems led to elaborate and painful procedures. Anything that made her daughter more dependent on her.
Dee Dee told doctors that her daughter had the mental age of a 7-year-old to explain why she always spoke for her. Gypsy was warned ahead of time to sit quietly in her wheelchair and not interrupt.
And if Gypsy walked or ate or did anything that revealed she wasn’t sick, Dee Dee beat her with a coat hanger until she resumed her role. After all, their home, their car, their income, and perhaps most importantly, the admiration Dee Dee received for being a such a devoted mother, all of it hinged on maintaining the lie.
Gypsy’s “sickness” funded their entire lifestyle and Dee Dee’s entire sense of self worth.
The only problem was, it wasn’t Gypsy who was sick.
Black people’s troubles began with a bill of sale.
In order to justify the unspeakable cruelty of slavery, we were completely excluded from normal life. It was illegal for us to learn how to read or to marry. If we tried to educate ourselves, or build wealth, we were beaten and massacred until we resumed our role.
After all, the free labour that built much of America’s infrastructure, the cotton industry that made America one of the largest economies in the world, the slave trade that…
