MAASA

I made MAASA because the country kept using the word “progress” like a sedative.

MAASA is slang. It is what we used to say on the block when somebody acted like the boss of us. “Who you, the maasa?” It was a joke. It stopped being a joke. It became the name of the artwork because the joke became the policy.

I painted a man with his head bowed beneath a rope and a tree because the picture this country still refuses to look at is the picture this country built itself on. I painted it red because the wound never closed. I painted it now because they are pretending the wound was never there.

I am not interested in comfort. I am not interested in healing arcs. I am not interested in being told this conversation is divisive. The chains are not gone. They were rewritten. They wear suits, badges, ballots, redlines, algorithms, sentencing guidelines, voter rolls, school boards, statehouses. They are still chains.

MAASA is a witness. It is also an accusation. It is also a refusal to forget. If you find it heavy that is because it is the actual weight. I made it because I am tired of pretending it is light.

There is no happy ending in this story. Not because the writer refused to write one. Because the country refused to give one.

The chains were never destroyed. They were re-engineered. Iron became paper. The auction block became the courthouse step. The overseer became the algorithm. The plantation became the precinct. The ledger became the credit score. The slave catcher became the patrol car.

The chains changed shape. The master changed clothes. The system learned new language.

The ballot was supposed to be the answer. The ballot became the next battlefield. Voter rolls are scrubbed in batches. Districts are drawn around the body. Polling places vanish from neighborhoods that already learned to walk further than their grandparents had to walk. Strict ID laws appear neutral. Their burden is not.

The prison was supposed to be justice. The prison became the loophole. The thirteenth amendment freed everyone except the convicted. So the country convicted everyone it could. One in three Black men. The plantation, monetized. The ballot, removed. The vote, vanished before it was cast.

What the law could not steal in public, the policy steals in private.

The curriculum was supposed to be memory. The curriculum became contraband. They legislate which history is allowed to be taught. They legislate which words are allowed to be said. They legislate the past out of the classroom and call it neutrality. A country that cannot name its violence is a country preparing to repeat it.

The economy was supposed to be opportunity. The economy became another rope. Predatory lending. Redlining renamed. Generational wealth siphoned at the closing table. Every door that opened was billed with interest. Every advance was followed by a backlash dressed in patriotism.

Every emancipation was followed by a black code. Every reconstruction by a redemption. Every gain by a gravity.

We say the names because the country will not. Emmett. Trayvon. Tamir. Sandra. Breonna. George. Sonya. Tyre. There are too many. There will be more. We say them because forgetting them is the next murder.

And still, somehow, a man keeps walking. Bowed. Counted out. Still here. Not because the country gave him a way through. Because he made one anyway. That is not a happy ending. That is the only honest one.

MAASA is not a warning about something coming. MAASA is a description of something here. The artwork ends. The wound does not.