you deserve a response to your post, captain; touching on the areas i feel most pertinent, i'll leave you with these, for now:

as much as it sucks, covid (2019) probably is a necessary burden Man has to face.
as is [the legacy of] *rump.

breonna.

rayshard (brooks).

floyd.

arbery (ahmaud).

daniel (prude).

==botham jean — murdered, 2018; i feel, because of the circumstances of his own death specifically, his name merits mention amidst the roster of 2020 black victims that i wish to highlight: the fucker was sitting on his sofa minding his own business eating fuckin' ice cream!!==

==elijah mcclain — very suspicious circumstances around mcclain's death, 2019; that kid didn't look like a threat to me. afterwards, a few white aurora police officers felt the need to mock eli's death. with the biggest of smiles on their remorseless faces.==

jacob blake — i don't condone criminals. and, granted, there is a good chance jacob did engage in criminal conduct that would deserve more than a slap on the wrist. if he did these things.
but, tell me then ..... we know, concretely, kyle rittenhouse murdered two people who (ironically) were protesting the ostensibly-excessive force deployed against jacob.
murdering innocents is categorically-worse than criminal trespass, third-degree sexual assault, and disorderly conduct.
is it not?
so ... how did kyle end up apprehended unscathed?
{ source: https://www.nytimes.com/article/jac.....g-kenosha.html }

if jack were a real person, he'd probably be creaming in his pants to know that more "niggers" "got theirs," and largely continue being able to get away with it.

regardless of any-and-all public outcries ever made against the perpetrators.

---

with this in mind, nikko...would you feel comfortable saying that life in the divided states ever was "normal"?
do you truly feel that life as it was, pre-covid, is something we-all should be content with returning to?

for myself: i feel lucky, so far, i haven't been targeted.
because i am sure i, even with my own smaller stature, look more "threatening" by default than botham and elijah.

so...no. no, i wouldn't want a return to that status quo.
i want the struggles of Being Black (and Brown) In America to continue entering in uninitiated whites' conscience.
i want the struggles and the plight of being relegated to the bottom of the pyramid (especially when this happens because of the mere accident of one's birth) to be known by more people.
i want this unjust system that, quintessentially, rewards those who are willing to screw over other, patently-innocent people, to be overthrown.

i don't want the continuance of a System of Life where it isn't enough to work 40 - 50 hours a week, to be able to avoid living in shambles.

---

i appreciate your being conscientious about The Problem With Jack.
we probably don't, at this juncture, need any narratives that appear to glorify him — correct, captain.



although. . . . .i will tell ya, i didn't mind your tackling the "touchier subjects" as you had, either.
since, i knew you yourself aren't a racist, rapist, priggard who condones what you were highlighting in your story.

honestly: if i were to be given the choice of being pitted against actual, power-abusing racists aiming to kill me right this moment, versus being given the choice of whether i want to digest a fiction that features said "risquè" subject matter (especially if i can know the bad guys do, eventually, receive their deserved comeuppances)...
...you can probably guess which one i'd pick

yeah?