You have to be strong, silent and composed. You have to maintain order and control. They are watching you, watching us, watching them. You’re not allowed to be emotional, angry or messy. You have to be composed, silent and strong. You have to maintain control and order. They are watching us, watching you, watching them. You’re not allowed to be messy, angry or emotional. You are not suppose to have feelings, let alone, let them see you, feeling, let them feel you. Your feelings are not valid, your feelings make you, too real, too human. Too Messy. What does it mean to be messy? Messiness as a lack of order, messiness as an act of disobedience, messiness as a failure to perform efficiently, messiness as a form of carelessness, messiness as dirty, messiness as spreading materials.”Perhaps, what is perceivably messy is not as messy as one may think, perhaps, messiness is necessary in understanding those who are not afforded the necessity to interact with messiness. Those who have been told their entire lives that they are messy, they are too messy, they should not be messy. When your a little kid, you remember when your family tells you not to make a mess, don’t mess up your clothes, stay clean and presentable. At the time, you don’t understand fully what it means to not be messy. To not get dirty, to follow orders, to perform efficiently. You don’t understand this huge history of a people’s, of black peoples, of black lives reduced to things, subhuman things, messy, scary things. Things.You don’t fully understand what your body says, what your black, black, black body means… But you are taught how to be have within this system that teaches you how to move, where we can move, how we can move, when we can move as longs as we are following the order of this system. ”
-Keijaun Thomas, How Did We Get Here, 2014
