The StarsNotes

Lovianhal Star Fam! You good? Good. I’m good too. I love you.

So what had happened was…

The whole wide world has been ablaze and abuzz with the seeming untimely passing of a man who could be described as a “conservative values” mouthpiece. His death is certainly unfortunate. In the same way that murder, however it happens, is unfortunate. And unnecessary. In the same way that gun violence is unnecessary. People who share some ideologies are beyond upset. People who share other ideologies couldn’t find a care if it was sitting on their laps, wrapped around hand weights. In the same way that mass school shootings and global genocides seem to have become polarizing topics.

It is not my interest or inclination to eulogize Charlie Kirk’s life or legacy. There is already so much discourse being had on these Harriet Tubman’s interwebs around Kirk’s very real contributions to American conversation, there is hardly anything at all that I could add here that would be either original or beneficial to a nuanced discussion that hasn’t already been said, ad nauseum. If you have experienced yourself as a so-called marginalized person in this country, you probably aren’t wiping much water from your face, unless you just finished a vigorous workout. If you have experienced yourself as person who aligns with Charlie Kirk’s ideologies, from the musings I’ve seen glimpses of the last day or two— you may be experiencing his murder differently.

As a Melanated human who researches the art, artistry and excellence of Black people specifically and as someone who adores learning Black history in general, I have sat through countless documentaries with bleary eyes and screams caught in my throat learning about how Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Medgar Evers and Fred Hampton and so many others were violently whisked away from this world in the prime of their activism and advocacy. There wasn’t social media back then. There weren’t 50-11 million people with video cameras in the palms of their hands to sit in their Ford Focuses at a stop light and in the time it takes for the light to turn green, they have broadcasted to whomever is scrolling that day— their unedited opinion about how they believe the world works. But if today’s technology existed in the height of Black leaders being martyred, I’m not clear the socials wouldn’t look at least similar. People would react with their true feelings. They would be distraught. They would assume the sky is falling and they would walk around in their hard-bottom church shoes, looking at the sky with anticipation of what they perceive to be that inevitable reality. The sky must not be screwed on too tight. It must be falling for this insane thing to keep happening…

With that said. My dad used to say to all of us children growing up and through to adulthood that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Which is true. Learning from past mistakes is not a platitude. It’s a cheat code for growth and evolution. The problem is, the people in this country who have bought into the idea and technology of whiteness, have never had to learn from their mistakes. At least, not in a way that reformulates their shared so-called values to move society forward without their backward-leaning ideas as the center of how society works. And I think that’s why Donald Trump’s second term rings so hollow, but also prophetic to what we can safely surmise as the ultimate demise of whiteness as a technology. The technology of whiteness is built on and with unimaginable violence. It’s sustained with fear. And it requires complete ignorance to how whiteness impacts anybody but the people who align with the idea of whiteness. Their own humanity isn’t even considered. Because, being human would require change. It would require adjusting rigid ideologies. It would require caring about other people beyond yourself. It would require growing up emotionally and spiritually. It would require taking 100% responsibility for one’s own life and contributions to society with sober eyes and critical analysis.

But we know that whiteness as a technology wasn’t crafted for such things. Whiteness was designed for global takeover. It was designed to move capitalism forward and used human trafficking, genocide and the free labor and innovations of mostly Black bodies as the engine and the fuel. The global minority was able to subjugate the global majority with unchecked, unimaginable violence. And brilliantly vile marketing. AND, this blueprint continues on to this day.

Consider that while prior to Kirk’s passing, I hadn’t even given him a passing thought. He didn’t come up in my brain space at all. His name wasn’t familiar, although, maybe, I had seen his face once or twice. “Podcast bros” are not my go to for information about anything. I simply do not care enough to care about what wackadoodles have to say. I have long said, and concur with ancestor Star Auntie Toni Morrison when she told Charlie Rose that one time,

“Don’t you understand, that the people who do this thing, that practice racism, are bereft. There is something distorted about the psyche. It’s a huge waste and it’s a corruption and a distortion. It’s like it’s a profound neurosis that nobody examines for what it is. It feels crazy. It is crazy. And, it has just as much of a deleterious effect on white people… and possibly equal, as it does Black people…”

Toni Morrison

The interview is a master class and if you’ve never seen it in its entirety-not just the clips—the context she shares for her point of view is *chef’s kiss. And it’s also a sort of quantum slice of how white men with power and privilege can sit in audience with Black brilliance, breathe in the rare air of someone with otherworldly intellectual and creative genius and “pick their brain” for profit, and not learn a got dern thing. Whell. Not anything that moves the collective “white” cultural needle forward.

Because the technology of whiteness is insanity, dressed as privilege. And it’s only dressed that way because whiteness is also a system. That also provides for the idea that, whiteness is enough:

• I don’t have to be a good person because whiteness tells me that my identity as white is enough.
• I don’t have to be sane in my thinking, I don’t have to address my own familial and ancestral trauma.
• I don’t have to investigate my world view. I don’t have to hold myself or anyone else in my personal universe accountable.
• I don’t have to check myself before I wreck myself. I don’t have to be responsible for my actions.
• I don’t have to care about people who don’t look like me. I don’t have to, because whiteness is my badge and my shield and my protection from consequences.
• I don’t even have to think about my whiteness, unless it suits me to defend it or defend against it being considered anything I don’t agree with.

This isn’t true, of course. It has never been true. But whiteness has never cared about what is true. Because it isn’t sane. If whiteness and the people who practice it were sane, they wouldn’t have needed to be persistently cajoled about their brutality and needed those whom they have subjugated to lie to them about being happy about their subjugation. In the same way that Charlie Kirk did not want to be called racist, despite his persistent racist rhetoric. He wanted to BE racist, he just didn’t like the idea of being CALLED racist. Because that would make him a bad person. And his armor of whiteness told him that regardless of what he said or did, whiteness was good and so he too, automatically, was good also. Being white was enough. To see his humanity. The only humanity that matters in a sea of humans.

It’s also the reason why, despite the harm of his rhetoric about melanated people, particularly Black women and people of the queer community; even so-called reputable, but historically-white journalistic institutions have reported his death like that man was the Dalai Lama and not an arrogant, chest puffed, hateful speech spewing, gun violence as a sacrifice for the second amendment toting, right-wing, wing nut who was not educated nor interested in information that would make him free. AND, these same national institutions are attempting to treat fair and balanced reporting of Charlie Kirk’s demise (and his societal input and impact) as an act of dissent. Which is also crazy pants.

It is, to this writer, unfortunate that Charlie Kirk didn’t know anything about consequences until the only time his whiteness as armor didn’t protect him. And that, my Star People friends is why some of these news outlets and his followers en masse are losing their ever wackadoodle minds. Kirk represents a pillar of whiteness as unequivocal protection from consequence. Of getting to yell “fire!” in a movie theatre and people shrug it off as, “oh well, boys will be boys!” Of, as a caste system, having the privilege to CHOOSE to consider the humanity of others if you want to— but only if you want to— because being able to share differences of “opinion” is the fabric of democracy!

And now, by force or by foul of their own inputs, white people who have practiced this thing called whiteness since the concept was created in the 1700s, are finally beginning to be peeled out of the mind wave that the whiteness they have been clinging to for generations will not and was not designed to protect them from themselves.

Will they learn this time? Who is to say? But we certainly have much to discuss tonight on The Envy McKee Show, as we explore a new month and thus, a new #shiftprompt— The Art of BEing HARVEST—Having All Resources Vested, Expressed, Spreading Triumph,

With tonight’s Deans:

Dr. Phil Roundtree—Dean of Societal Mental Health Awareness

Sylvie Vaught—Dean of Goddess Studies

Eric Nixon—Dean of Fellowship + Change

Bridge’tte Stargate-Dean of Spiritual Mid-Wifery

Jonka Boogie—Dean of Rhythm and Music Alchemy

Kyle Ingram—Dean of Conscious Social Engagement

Meredith + Tavis—Deans of Indigenous Education

The WuWu Metaphysical studio opens Friday nights at 7p EST on WURD 96.1FM Philly + The FB LIVE (worldwide). See you then yes? Oh! Bring a journal, a pen and 3 frens! WuWu is best done together. You can listen live with this link and/or on the WURD App. We ARE Live on the FB Live OR Twitch too tonight!

A Special Note To Those Who Are New

I’d like to say as an aside for those who are new, who have access to my insights now because we’ve switched up the newsletter distribution platform…The Envy McKee Show aka Starfolk University, The Onliest On Air School for Modern Mystics, has been broadcasting on WURD-FM in Philly since 2019. We are an established community of spiritual/metaphysical practitioners of every modality, who come together on Fridays to have intellectually rigorous and conscious conversation about the world from a spiritual literacy lens. We broadcast from a Black woman owned legacy station in Philadelphia. I, Envy McKee, am a Black woman. Most, but not all of TEMS Deans are melanated humans. Our Blackety Black voices are front and centered. People of every range of melanation are welcome if you are polite, interested in working your work without spiritually bypassing and have an interest in reframing the conversations you keep having with yourself and the world at large. If you are joining our class via FB Live and Twitch, your insightful comment in the comments section during our conversation is always welcome. A journal, a pen and bringing 3 frens to talk amongst yourselves is always suggested. It will help you take notes of what resonates in order to return to and synthesize the information you receive over the course of the next week. You will be challenged. You will be changed. Per usual, in EVERY single thing we do, the intention is transformation. And well moisturized legs. There is very real and extraordinarily palpable energy flowing through our discussions. Please keep this in mind.

If these things do not resonate with you, you are welcome to find a more suitable community to vibe with. The ancestors, ascended masters, angels, spirit guides and whomever else is working with us beyond the veil on our behalf —do not play about us. And we don’t play about us either. You are welcome to join us, we love that you’re here. And also, tread intentionally.

Lovianhal,
-e-