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Please do not be deceived. Orange has never been and cannot be the new black. It is a versatile and seasonally adored, secondary color that lives somewhere between the varying heat signatures of red and yellow’s main character energies.

Granted, pumpkins or other gourds as well as some yams, spices, fruit, and metals mid-shine that contribute to the African Diaspora’s tidalectic of nourishment owe plenty to her warmth. A flame’s safer spots may even envy the color. Still, calling orange “black” is untrue of and unfair to them both.

We can acknowledge some points of convergence like Halloween decor, autumn leaves against a deep night sky or tarred pavement, and the May 15-16 news cycle’s presentation of the Nottoway Plantation ablaze juxtaposed with shadowy video of random men wearing bright inmate uniforms darting into darkness. Fire morphing into smoke. Brothers seizing a momentary return to freedom, for better or worse, going ghost… .

To survivors of modern assaults and centuries-old epigenetic crimes against humanity, the fall of relics like the NP estate might affect cellular memory with resistance and mixed reviews regardless of one’s (social) location between Heaven and Earth. Criminality is an unfortunate part of human nature that came shortly after Creation. Its correction, then, deserves righteous justice which must not discriminate.

Black, from its indescribable vastness to the socialized belief it could ever be limited to a mere ‘sinister/chic’ dichotomy, is just Black. It is not deserving of blanket associations with evil. Like the undeniable feeling of a Spandau Ballet song, I know this… much is true.

Thanks for coming to my Taína talk.