My Chinese-American uncle, once fed by Black Panthers, now drives a Tesla
This is not meant as a callout post, more an observation of the current state of race and class politics. If you’re my uncle Sam, hi! You are now an allegory for the United States. If you didn’t want that, sorry, you should’ve been named something else.
Let’s talk about the Black Panther Party. My family is from nearby Oakland, and at least around here, we honor their legacy. They educated people for free. They advocated for the rights of minorities. They had a free lunch program that my uncle definitely took advantage of, whether or not he needed to. My family was poor and Asian, so they were kind of adjacent to the target audience, at least. Anyway, the Black Panthers were always good guys to me. I thought it was super cool in high school when I interviewed my mom’s siblings and found out that Sam used to hang around the Black Panthers in the 60s. That he got tear gassed along side them at their protests. It made me feel like my family was part of American history, and on the right side of it.
And now let’s talk about Tesla. Elon Musk is a white supremacist. He hates trans people. He did a Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration. He grew up under apartheid South Africa, and he still retweets pro-apartheid rhetoric. My uncle bought the car before some of that. But Elon Musk has always been bad news. And you can’t support the company without supporting him. Most of his wealth is in Tesla stock.
Anyway, I thought this was very “Jordan Peele putting an Asian guy in Get Out." Very late stage capitalism. When the US was young and poor it benefited from Black people’s unpaid labor, and now that we have money and power we spend it on perpetuating racism and inequality.
It doesn’t matter your history if you are choosing to side with the billionaires, with fascists, over your own family and over your own interests.
You think you’ll be spared because you’re the “model minority”? You think that worshiping the bloodsucking class gets you anything but leeches? I say the same thing to LGB drop the T. You’re a fool if you think that your loyalty, that anything will keep them from shooting you in the back. I am an American, and I fear no country but my own.
TL;DR Sell your Tesla while you still can!