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On Cake, Candidates, and Abject Hate
You can’t say you’re not racist when your actions support Black oppression.
On Cake
My parents used to wield an old saying when I was a kid: you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. Maybe your parents used it, too. I vaguely understood it meant that you can’t have it both ways. If I had cake — a slice, a cupcake, or an entire cake — I’d eat it. The cake would have fulfilled its purpose and mine. And that would be the end of that.
But I didn’t fully understand the meaning of the cake saying until I was in my mid-twenties when a friend, a fervent gay rights proponent, derided “queens” for effeminate mannerisms. I looked at him askance, and before I knew what had happened, the words fell out of my mouth like hot grits, “George! What are you talking about? How can you be all about gay rights and at the same time put down the very people you say you support? You can’t have your cake and eat it, too!”
In that instant, my brain connected the dots, and the literal meaning of the cake maxim blossomed into my consciousness, icing and all. You cannot “have” a cake (slice or whole) and expect it to remain as such after you’ve “eaten” it.
The real-world application is simple: We cannot hold two outcomes simultaneously that are opposites…