When Irony Took Shelter at the National Museum of African American History

By Stacey Patton

Did y’all see that all those musty MAGATs in DC had to be evacuated from Trump’s big 4th of July spectacle because of the storm?

And guess where some of these “take our country back” patriots had to go for shelter? They had to camp out at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Haaaaaa!!!

The same racist degenerates who holler about “woke museums,” “DEI,” “critical race theory,” and “why do we have to keep talking about race and slavery?” suddenly found themselves needing refuge inside a building dedicated to the very history they keep trying to ban, whitewash, and bury.

And honestly, Y'all, I wanted that whole fucking museum to come alive like some like some Kara Walker nightmare cut in black paper and ancestral vengeance. I wanted the walls to start moving and silhouettes to start peeling themselves off the exhibits.

And I wanted some Octavia Butler sci-fi type shit to go down in there too. I wanted the whole museum to bend time. Some Kindred portal energy. I wanted the walls to ripple. I wanted the floor to hum.

I wanted little shadow children with wild plaits darting through the hallways, laughing loud and eerie like they were in a Toni Morrison novel. I wanted those MAGATs to turn one corner looking for the bathroom and suddenly find themselves on a plantation in 1812, holding a hoe and sweating with no SPF.

I wanted white women to lean too close to the display cases and suddenly get snatched by the spirit of Sojourner Truth and start chanting "Arn't I a woman?"

I wanted plantation ghosts sliding across the floor. I wanted maroons dropping from the ceiling tiles. I wanted Nat Turner at the top of the stairs with a hatchet like, “Well, well, well.” I wanted Harriet Tubman standing by the emergency exit with her arms crossed, looking at those MAGATs like, "Say somethin'. I dare you."

I wanted Ida B. Wells to pop out from behind a display case with a notepad and say, “Names, please. For the record.” I wanted Frederick Douglass to lean over the balcony with his Afro uncombed AF and ask, “To what, to the MAGAT, is the Fourth of July?”

And then, I wanted to see Nat Turner and the maroons chasing their asses up and down those hallways like Scooby-Doo villains while Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson play tennis with their red hats. I wanted Harriet Tubman standing by the elevator saying, “Going down? Good. Let's start with the slave ship.”

And when the storm finally passed, I wanted the news cameras to catch them all shaken and traumatized as every last one of them left that sacred place with only one tooth and a full 1972, Angela Davis, Soul Train, “say it loud” Afro.