When I was a boy, and my pop would go away on the endless speaking engagements that often paid for my life when writing didn't (which was often,) he would always give me the same advice before he left: "Know what you know." By which he meant, that there wasn't any secret or new information that I should seek from him, but to see clearly what was in front of me, and be true to what I understood. I am struck by the amount of institutional hand wringing, the statements of purpose and intention on the part of corporations and organizations, the amount of advice being requested, the "what should we do?" There seems to be at the core of this a "willful ignorance" as Baldwin says, as these institutions must see who they support, they see their boardrooms, they see their financial statements. But this "intentional blindness," is by no means the sole property of the corporations and institutions. I see so many hands that hold protest signs, also covering their eyes when it comes to their own anti-blackness. As if they don't see who they support or don't support. How many times I have heard people tell me, "My career would be so much further along if i were Black." or been the only person who's people were enslaved in America in one of those vibrantly multicultural Brooklyn parties that seems to have room for every kind of colored people but us, or heard one of us dismissed as crazy or silly or any number of pejoratives, and known in some part of myself that that word was related to their Blackness. Of course, I know, that I too have endless work to do, in loving myself, my community, and the members of my community more and better, and seeing how interconnected those goals are. I can see the ways I've failed. I don't always know the way forward, we may even disagree about how, but we try. In the end the only thing I can hope to do, is follow pop's advice, to take my hands from my eyes and "know what I know."