Do I Believe in God?

Short Answer: Yes.

Longer Answer: What the fuck is God?

I had a date last night, and over mojitos, which are proof that God exists (mmm!), she asked me about my educational history. It's strange, but you can trace my developmental path and the unfolding of who I am today by tracking my accumulation of degrees. The way that I assume some people reflect back and think about relationships or maybe jobs perhaps, as markers of who they were at distinct points along the course of their lives, I track myself based on who I was and what I was during different degree programs.

To be certain, I am a consumer of education. In fact, student loans are my only source of debt. Oh! Well, a hospital bill too, but I don't have consumer debt. I believed the lie that education was the route to overcoming the horrors of oppression. Education is how you obviate racism, right? Uh- no, but people like to tell you that lie when you're a smart little black girl.

So, I tried a path, didn't work, retrained through education. Didn't produce the results that I wanted, so I retrained through education. Decided that I'd like to be upwardly mobile, and decided to professionalize through education. Decided that I was tired of working for (sometimes with, but mostly frustrated by the for) dumbfucks who were grossly incompetent, so I sought advancement through education. This shit is starting to look like a hamster wheel. Dizzying, nauseating, disorienting, and it requires a lot of work without actually moving you anywhere.

Get a degree little black girl. Then your life would be what you dream of. More education little black girl, then you can be an astronaut. Graduate school little black girl, then people won't mistreat you. Have you tried a PhD little black girl? People who have a doctorate are never maligned. Little black girl. Yeah you, the one who's crying. Do you realize that the only reason life is so hard is because you just aren't really all that smart? So, go get a degree little black girl and stop making things so hard on yourself.

That's the dumb shit that oppression will teach you. It is your fault little black girl, so why don't you go somewhere and learn how to act right!