“To forget is to surrender. To remember is to rebuild.” – Unknown
The Pain Beneath the Satire
Today I saw a video on Instagram that made me laugh so hard I nearly cried. But not because it was just funny— because beneath the humour was a truth so raw, it shook me.
The scene?
A white man on a horse telling his enslaved worker, “Slavery is abolished. You are now free.”
The newly “freed” man thanks him and asks what that means—no more cotton fields? No more caring for horses?
Exactly, the man replies. You’re free.
But when the ex-slave says he’s going to rest, the master informs him, “About that… you’ll need to find your own accommodation. You’re a free man now.”
He has no money, of course.
To which the ex-master responds:
“You didn’t save anything? Not even three cents? That’s not wise, gambler.”
The irony is biting.
The satire is brutal.
But the truth?
The truth is nauseating.
Because that was real life.
After centuries of slavery— of being stolen, stripped, sold, raped, beaten, degraded, and dehumanized— Black people were “freed” … with no land, no money, no reparations, no roadmap, and no education. Just a hostile world telling them to figure it out.
Can you imagine being “freed” into nothingness?
Being blamed for poverty you didn’t create?
Being told to “work harder” in a system built to keep you broken?
I laughed at that video. But not because I found it harmless.
I laughed because if I don’t laugh… I might burn the whole world down.
Ancestral Fire in My Flesh
I sat with that clip afterward. I replayed it in my mind.
And suddenly, I wasn’t laughing anymore.
I felt it.
In my bones. In my blood.
A deep, hot pain.
The ache of generations screaming inside me:
“We lived this.”
400 years of being reduced to tools, being kept ignorant on purpose, and then tossed into a system that still saw you as disposable.
That pain… it’s not gone.
It lives in the silence of classrooms.
In the underfunded schools.
In the wage gaps.
In the way history is rewritten.
In the way justice is denied.
But we are still here.
We are the dreams of those who had nothing but chains and vision.
We are the proof that pain can be transformed into power.
They Wanted Us to Forget—But We Remember
That satire? It’s not just a joke.
It’s a mirror.
And it reflects just how ridiculous—and violent—the idea of “freedom” without foundation truly was.
But now we know.
We remember.
And because we remember, we build differently.
We heal, we rise, we create wealth, we tell our stories, we raise our children in truth, we reclaim our history.
We laugh, but we never forget. So this post is my memory.
This is my way of saying:
No, I won’t look away.
Yes, I’ll carry the fire.
And I’ll use it to light the way forward.
Salima
Just me thinking out loud over here