To quote Nas on NY State of Mind, “I don’t know how to start this shit.”
Last year was traumatizing and turbulent and did I mention traumatizing?
In January and February I was (almost singlehandedly) leading a team of 15 people aged 17-54 in Egypt and Cyprus. That experience caused tremendous burnout. When COVID hit the states I was in Germany and I flew back on the first flight I could before the travel ban took effect- actually, the day of. I went back to Madison and was staying in the housing of an organization I used to work with there. While there, around May, was when I got intimately accustomed to burnout- and accepting that I’d been going too hard for too long. And then! Ahmaud Arbery was killed. And then George Floyd was killed. And then Breonna Taylor. And then Jacob Blake in our Wisconsin background of Kenosha. I’m not a talker (despite being a poet) I’m a doer. And so I was in the streets, protesting, as well as writing and self publishing a book about my first hand experiences on the frontlines. I was also protesting within the organization I worked for- a “christian” missions organization. I laid out to them how systemically they too, were practicing racism. My reward? They evicted me from their housing. They held base wide meetings where they smeared and blasphemed my character. They gaslit me whenever I came to them. And they told everyone that they weren’t complacent when it came to anti-racism work- DESPITE me going to them 2-3 years prior and telling the base leader that the org needed anti racist training. The leader’s nonchalant response was, “Well, what you’ve got to understand is we’re a group of midwestern white people- we don’t know much about race.”- functionally- using the very problem as a justification for their lack of response, and implying that if only I understood the social situation I wouldn’t have any qualms with it. I reject that.
I spent 4 years with that org- a “christian” org- and thought I made friends and even developed familial ties with some of them. But when things got real- and I refused to be silent- they evicted me. In the middle of a global pandemic.
As Kendrick Lamar asks in Mortal Man, “when shit hits the fan is you still a fan?”
I found the answer was an overwhelming “no.”
Most of the people I thought I could rely on abandoned me and sided with the institution. Going into the late summer/early fall I was lead actor in a film called Trace The Line (but I signed an NDA so I can’t talk too much about that…hopefully y’all will see it one day, tho) and during those couple months my mental health declined significantly. I was still suffering from the encumbering burnout of my early 2020 excursion to Egypt and Cyprus- and jumping into the summer I still hadn’t healed from the months prior- and now I had spiritual abuse wounds and also wounds from activism- like being teargassed and maced (one night during the summer teargas wafted into our house- that’s how proximate my living conditions were to the protests of the summer). I was in survival mode. Just tryna do the things I had to. But I was in a BAD place. Most nights I’d take a full glass of whiskey to my room. The wounds were compiling and I had no space to process and/or heal them. And then, I got married October 24th. And moved to Yukon, Canada on October 27th. I died there. Not literally- but, for the first time all year I had space just to break down. To weep. To be hurt. And I was hurting, excruciatingly. I still am hurting. And that’s okay. It has to be. I haven’t posted on here for a long time because I didn’t know how to say anything. Like, I still don’t want to hurt that organization. Which is obviously a double standard cause they clearly didn’t give a flying fuck about me.
I remember I was in a meeting with their leadership team post-eviction and one of the leaders said, “Matthew, you know we love you, right?”
And I immediately retorted, “But you can see how evicting me for speaking out against racism in the middle of a global pandemic doesn’t communicate that you love me, right?”
And he shrugged.
If that is love then I don’t want to be loved by anyone ever!
During the winter I broke down like a car out of gas. Contemplating suicide. Wondering if I needed to be checked in to a psych ward. Damn near apostatizing. Cause if their god is the god I’d been serving for the past 4 years as I worked in that org then I didn’t want anything to do with God.

Part of what I realized is that by being in the org I betrayed myself. From the 2nd month of working in that org in 2016 I knew it was racist. But, even then I was in survival mode. I didn’t graduate High School. I didn’t want to be flipping burgers for minimum wage. I didn’t have a good job history. Where else could I go? So, I stayed. And endured a whole lot that I never should have allowed myself to go through.
One “fun” story is a dude who asked me why I was listening to “nigger music” when I was listening to Kendrick Lamar.

I wrote a poem that I published in You Can Not Burn The Sun (my book) called ” white love has not been enough” and in it I write,
“to truly care
requires love
or policy in the absence of love

and i need some policy
because white love has not been enough”

I’m coming to terms with how I put myself in a situation wherein I needed to be protected, and wasn’t. I relied on a broken and debased love when I should’ve demanded policy. I would literally avoid going to the main base of the org because I anticipated experiencing racism in the form of micro and macro aggressions.
I stayed. For 4 long years. And I betrayed myself in doing so. And the day when I decided to stop betraying myself- they painted me as the bad guy.
But do you want to know the funny thing? I knew that would happen. The night before I went to the organization I was at a true friend’s house and I told them that if I spoke up I’d be villianized. I anticipated assassination of character and I still went. Granted, I didn’t anticipate getting evicted. That one really sucked. But, more than my own self betrayal, the fact of the matter is I was betrayed by an org that exploited my labor for 4 years. By an org that wanted me to be a good little nigger, (lets call a spade a spade, ok?) obedient, and docile. By an org that named eviction as love.

I write this because I gotta tell my truth. I write this because I realized I have no desire to continue suffering woundings that come from self-betrayal. I write this cause fuck racism. I write this because it is liberating to know and tell our stories.
And so, my dear reader, I hope and pray that you can learn from my mistakes. Don’t betray yourself like I did. And don’t work for people who will betray you. If you see red flags call that shit out. If you see red flags and you call that shit out and they stay complacent- LEAVE. You owe them nothing. Love yourself enough to leave.
I’ll say it again, love yourself enough to leave.

“No one ever talks about the moment you found that you were white. Or the moment you found out you were black. That’s a profound revelation. The minute you find that out, something happens. You have to renegotiate everything.”

-TONI MORRISON

As a transracial adoptee who grew up in a white family and was raised in a small white town in Oregon state, I always knew that the color of my skin was different, but I never thought that meant anything about me or the world around me. That is, until I was about 7 or 8. I had two experiences that I’ll never forget- not so much for what they communicated about me- but because of what they communicated about Whiteness and the White world I was embraced by in some kind of barbed wire hug.

The first; as a child we attended church every Sunday. One day a family’s house burned down who attended our church and so our church decided that we’d build them a new house. My family went to the construction site and I was helping the young son of the burned down house. We were around the same age and his name was Micah. I didn’t really know Micah, but we weren’t at all on bad terms. Hell, we were 7. What kind of bad terms can 7 year olds even be on? And then- Micah looked over to me and snarled, “go get me a hammer, nigger.”

I went to my White mother immediately and told her what Micah said and she patted me on the back and said, “it’s okay. Go back to work, honey.” I learned then that Whiteness doesn’t know how to/or won’t validate the violation of Black bodies. That even when told about a violation, Whiteness sweeps it under the rug and prefers to go on with its comfortable reality. And this reality is so interesting as I look at it in context of what was happening around me: a White family’s house burned down and our White church said “we’ll rebuild it.” meanwhile after telling my White mother that a metaphorical house of mine was being burnt down right before her eyes she said “go back into the house.” Functionally & essentially, “Burn alive, for all I care.”

My second racial revelation happened while I was at recess. In my school, Fir Grove Elementary, 3rd and 5th graders shared the same recess. I was playing four square with some friends when all of a sudden a White girl ran up to me out of nowhere. I didn’t recognize her from my class , so I knew she must be in 5th grade. I found out later that her name was Hailey. “Do you know why you’re Black?”, she asked me. As an 8 year old I can freely admit I spent not one moment thinking about WHY my skin was black. Her question intrigued me, because it revealed to me that not only was I different- but! that there must be a reason for why, too. “No”, I replied. “Because God put you in a toaster and forgot to take you out”, she shot back, giggled, and ran away. I don’t think I ever saw her again. Again, I learned another important lesson about the world around me. I learned that Black bodies are easily forgotten by the God of White people. That my Black body, and Black life, is to be forever remembered by me and the world around me, as an afterthought to the God of White people.

Life lessons like that stick with you. They eat away at you. They disfigure and disorient you. And in my country, in the White communities I’ve traveled in, they’re reinforced. Perhaps that’s why this last summer was so traumatic and triggering to me. If you’ve read my debut poetry collection You Can Not Burn The Sun, you know a bit of what I’ll say. I blew the whistle on the systemic racism within a primarily White Christian missions organization I used to work for, and their response was to gaslight, disenfranchise, and evict me. I was living in housing they provided me because I had nowhere else to go (in a global pandemic- in Dane county where there was actually a hold on evictions because of the pandemic).

Again, I blew the whistle, saying, “you have been a fire to the house I live in.” And their response was, “then find a new house because we don’t want to hear about how we’ve burned you.” There was no ultimatum, but if there was, I think it would have been something like this: “stay silent, and bear the burns of this house or be excommunicated from us.” Because- kinda like Kanye said post-hurricane Katrina about Bush and Blackness, “the God of White people doesn’t care about Black people.”

It’s no wonder I apostatized at age 18 because I suspected God was a White supremacist. I’m 25 now, and somehow, a Christian. Spiritual abuse and trauma fucking sucks. Because it irons into your soul that not just people- but God- is ugly. As I continue my life, I have to intentionally conceive of a God who doesn’t just “love everybody.” No. My God must wake up in the morning to gospel music, Godself singing how Black bodies and lives don’t just matter to God- but how we are a priority to God. Because I can’t and I won’t worship a God who forgets me.

like the article? Feel free to pay me: venmo: @matthewcharlespoet ca$happ: $matthewcharlespoet paypal: spadeshackle@gmail.com Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/matthewcharlespoet?fan_landing=true