Say Black.

James Baldwin was on point when he said, “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”

Lately, I’ve been feeling that rage watching people retreat and refuse to name what is right in front of them.

I find myself asking if there’s a silent movement happening to stop saying Black.

After watching the murders of Mike Brown, Breonna Taylor, Daunte Wright, George Floyd, and so many others, it seemed like (white) people finally learned how to name anti-Black racism directly. People said Black lives. Black communities. Anti-Black violence. People understood (or so I thought) that specificity mattered.

But now I sit in rooms where people are clearly talking about the Black experience, looking me directly in the face, and the word Black never comes out of their mouths.

Instead, they say:
“people of color.”
“BIPOC.”
“social equity.”
“underserved communities.”

It feels like erasure happening in real time.

I’m all about collective liberation. Our struggles are deeply connected and the only way to realize actual freedom is by destroying systems of oppression that harm all of us.

But collective liberation is not lumping everybody together and pretending oppression shows up the same for all of us.

Equity is not equality. I can’t believe I’m still explaining this in 2026. Equality is sameness. Equity is specificity. Equity requires precision. It requires us to name who was harmed, how they were harmed, why they were harmed, and how those harms compound over time to produce entirely different outcomes.

You cannot repair what you refuse to name.

Let’s practice.

• U.S. chattel slavery harmed Black people through forced labor, family separation, sexual violence, and legalized dehumanization because a racial caste system required permanent, inheritable bondage compounding into generational wealth theft and today’s racial wealth gap.

• Jim Crow segregation harmed Black Americans through voter suppression, racial terror, and legalized exclusion because white supremacy required racial hierarchy after emancipation compounding into segregated schools, neighborhoods, and institutions.

• Redlining harmed Black families by denying mortgages and marking Black neighborhoods as “hazardous” because federal policy treated Black presence as financial risk compounding into massive home equity disparities.

• The War on Drugs harmed Mexican communities through border militarization, racial profiling, cartel-driven criminal narratives, immigration enforcement entanglement, and the racialization of drug trafficking as a Mexican threat compounding into deportation pipelines, detention, family separation, and exclusion from the legal cannabis economy.

• The War on Drugs harmed Black communities through disproportionate arrests, harsher sentencing disparities, aggressive policing in Black neighborhoods, and the construction of the “drug dealer” as a Black criminal threat compounding into mass incarceration, felony disenfranchisement, barriers to housing and employment, and exclusion from the legal cannabis industry.

Today, cannabis generates billions of dollars in legal revenue.
Black ownership nationwide is estimated at less than 2%.

But when people in the cannabis industry talk about repair and equity, the language suddenly becomes vague.

As if saying “Black” or “Mexican” is somehow divisive, when the harm itself was explicitly racial.

Oppression is engineered with precision. Repair must be too.

Not “minority support.”
Not “diverse applicants.”
Not “underserved communities.”

But policies that name the people harmed and tie remedy directly to injury.

That is not division.

That is alignment.

Social equity means addressing specific needs in order to create a level playing field. If you refuse to get specific, you're not seeking liberation nor freedom, you’re simply looking for convenience and comfort.

Cannabis operators can practice precision by:

• Prioritizing Black and Mexican-owned cannabis brands in purchasing and shelf space.

• Creating capital access, mentorship, and incubator programs specifically for Black entrepreneurs from communities targeted by drug enforcement.

• Funding expungement clinics and legal defense efforts in Black neighborhoods impacted by cannabis arrests.

• Investing a portion of profits directly into community-based organizations working on reentry, housing, and economic mobility in those same communities.
  

Consumers can practice precision too:

• Buying from Black-owned cannabis companies.

• Supporting dispensaries that publicly commit to racial equity and transparent ownership diversity.

• Donating to expungement efforts and reentry programs for people with drug convictions.

• Asking where their dispensary’s products come from and who benefits from the profits.

Recognizing Black specificity does not undermine collective liberation. It clarifies it.

Because when we stop saying Black, we don’t become more inclusive.
We become less honest.

And when a justice movement can describe the harm but struggles to name the people harmed, we have to ask ourselves:

What kind of progress are we protecting?
And who is quietly disappearing from the story?

I understand that advocates of cannabis legalization feel pressure to remain vague as the industry becomes more regulated, but we can’t confuse legal language with social responsibility.

I challenge anybody in the cannabis industry who cares about “social equity” to get more specific.

Say Black when we talk about repair.

Because the War on Drugs was not vague.

And the remedy shouldn't be either.

Itz Personal.