my red pill
“You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”
My red pill was not a specific, isolated offering of awareness versus ignorance, but rather a series. One that took the shape of reading material, beginning with Race Matters by Cornel West and culminated in God, the Black Man and Truth by Ben Ammi. These texts, respectively, initiated my ongoing thirst for knowledge and offered guidance to my personal revolution.
Race Matters beautifully addressed the empire’s oldest and, arguably, most serious social problem. In doing so, it inspired my continuing examination of a wide range of the sociopolitical issues, practices and people which have defined American history.
Reading God, the Black Man and Truth was like accessing the blueprint of how I was raised and why. More than that, it helped channel my frustration, anger and rage onto a path of fundamental transformation – toward justice, equality and peace.
As these books crossed my path years apart, many other reads contributed to the slow, steady process of questioning, learning, resisting, building, persevering. A key element of such progression, though, is found in the sharing of our life experiences. Which begs the question…
What was your red pill?
