So today I was perusing my usual websites and I came across an article about the new “Miss USA.” At first glance I was elated that the winner this year was a person of color and more specifically a Black woman! I am not too well versed in all of what being a newly crowned “Miss USA” means or the process to competing in the pageant entails, I was just happy that there was a Black person who won to be honest. I was feeling good about Kára McCullough, the new “Miss USA’s” win until I read that she sparked controversy by saying that “healthcare is a privilege and not a right.” For the life of me I do not understand why some Black folks feel it is ok to project, protect, and ultimately preserve elitist and bourgeoisie attitudes and sentiments.

It is already immensely hard being Black in America and it seems like as soon as Black folks get a few dollars and accumulate some level of affluence they either forget their roots or if they were born well-off, they have a hard time sympathizing with other Black folks who are not as fortunate. Why would any Black person feel as though healthcare is a “privilege and not a right?” So I take it their ancestors who came to this country on the bottoms of boats deserved inhumane treatment because to have their basic health needs taken into account would have been to somehow afford them a service ALL humans should not be rewarded. I guess a person should not have healthcare especially if they cannot afford it because they are just hogging-up the resources for those of us who can! (READ WITH THE MOST SARCASM AND UTTER DISGUST ONE CAN HUMANLY MUSTER)

I do not know why Black folks who achieve a certain status in life feel as though they have somehow arrived at the Promised Land. How mightily selfish is it of us as Black folks to make strides in this country and not think about those of us who cannot or who have not been afforded the same opportunities. We were only able to survive because we had community and formed it in the most destitute and horrid conditions. Your mother was sold and your father was killed for trying to run away, so now the Sallie the middle-aged cook at the big house takes you in and she becomes “aunt Sallie.” Fictive kinship and collective resourcefulness was how Black folks survived the trials and tribulations of “the peculiar institution.”

Now how incredibly disrespectful is it to our ancestors that we are now so far removed from the days of slavery that we can make statements that sound more aligned with our oppressors than it does with the spirit of our people! I assume Kára McCullough’s ancestry traces back through the America’s and back through the Middle Passage. If so I can only imagine how many of our ancestors are rolling in their unmarked graves and the resounding collective sigh being heard by them in the ether at the thought of one of their own offspring talking about healthcare being a privilege when the wellbeing and HEALTH of Black folks has literally been the focal point and plight of our entire existence in America!!!