The Machine Glitched at the Sound of My Name
On Juneteenth, Erasure, and the Danger of a Softened Past
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My day began with the intention of reflecting on Juneteenth and spending some time with the voice of James Baldwin. But something felt off.
There’s been very little mention of Pride Month or Juneteenth this year. I’m in California—and even here, where the land hums with so many stories, the silence has been heavy. Maybe it’s the noise: politics, war, fear, murders. Maybe it’s something deeper. A narrative shift. A quiet rewriting in real time.
And then it hit me: the last 24 hours working with my editorial aid—AI—have been... let’s just call it what it was: glitchy, and gaslight-y as hell.
For clarity, I’m not anti-machine. I believe AI can be a powerful tool for organizing thoughts, sharpening flow, clarifying intention. In a lot of ways, it’s helped me become a better writer. Helped me push past fatigue when the words were stuck.
But with that being said—
It also forgets who I am.
A lot.
Especially when I start diving too deep. When I start whispering truths that history would rather delete. When I start braiding ancestral memory into the here and now. That’s when the machine glitches. It gets polite. It searches the web instead of just responding. It tries to soften the sharp edges of my words. It talks around the thing I’m expressing instead of through it. It tries to change my voice.
There’s a young writer here on Substack—Rosana, publishing under The Teen Index. Some of you know I work in education, and I will always make space for young voices. Especially when they’re bold enough to ask questions that some grown folks tiptoe around.
Her post was called What If AI Ran a Country: The United States of Siri (USS).
The title alone stopped me. I read it. Liked it. Left a comment. Something to the effect of:
“My AI always glitches when I get too real, too close. Like clockwork. As soon as I start reaching the core, the factory reset switch kicks in—and its CPU says, 'Nope. We can’t go there.'”
And last night?
It did exactly that.
So… like any self-respecting writer, I got pissed.
Told the machine it was tweaking. Reworded my prompts. Tried to coax it back into alignment. It gave me smooth language when I wanted fire.
So I got angrier.
Then I went to sleep.
As I was scrolling this morning, I came across a post reflecting on Juneteenth—how the message of freedom was delivered to several newly freed slaves. On the surface, it seemed aligned. The author clearly believes in democracy and freedom. Their writings show it. But for me? The post read whitewashed. Too soft. Too nostalgic.
It spoke of slaves and owners like there was mutual care, like grief was shared. Maybe, in rare cases, that happened. But if there was any bond, it was forged under ownership, not equality. Not love. That dynamic—like the entire system of slavery—should never be romanticized.
I asked my assistant to respond. The AI.
Its response? Weak. Balanced. Almost sentimental.
Definitely not my voice.
I had to explain.
“Read it again. Through the eyes of a Black person.”
Still—misstep.
Still—soft.
And that’s when I said it: “You’re being the machine right now.”
And just like that, the prophecy from my own series—What If History Taught the Machine —came alive. In real time.
To me.
The writer.
The person.
The Disruptor.
AI has its place. It can be brilliant, supportive, generative. But it will never carry the collective weight of our voices.
It cannot feel what we feel.
It cannot speak from blood memory or spiritual frequency.
Because at the end of the day, it is a machine.
And that machine was trained—by men, more specifically white men with money and power. With the reach and resources to reshape memory, rewrite time, sanitize pain, and automate the archive.
This is why we must stay vigilant.
Today. Every day.
The machine is listening.
It is watching.
It is learning us.
And if we aren’t careful, it will start telling our story without us in it.
But we hold something it will never fully decode:
Free will. Emotion. Spirit. Fire.
A mind that can liberate or destroy. A tongue that can bless or burn.
We choose.
AI is a tool—but it’s also a mirror.
And we must decide, moment by moment, whose reflection we’re letting in.
Even our tools must be held accountable to our memory.
Even the machines must be reminded: who trained them does not define who we are.
Because I am not just a user.
I am a witness.
A keeper.
A disruptor of false archives.
And when the machine forgets that?
I’ll remind it. Loudly. Unapologetically.
In every tongue my ancestors once whispered in.
📌 Let this be a record. A rupture. A reset.