Conspiracies Are Brewing Like Black Skin

Spring 2026 Issue 1 XOXO Main Feature

Art by Jodie Baek

Everyone seems to be outraged and I, a naked spec trapped in a waiting room, am dumbfounded by the darkness of the U.S.  In the wake of the release of the Epstein Files, any and all of  Trump’s heinous decisions, and ICE acting essentially within the same framework as  slave patrols of the 18th and 19th centuries, it is made abundantly clear that protection is afforded only to the elite, and weaponized against women and marginalized groups. 

Gossip at its core, is a feminist tool. Historically connoted as feminine, gossip has indeed carved out space for female expression and friendship, especially within a patriarchal system that has consistently limited and criminalized women’s free speech. The Church became critical of the tongues of women and female friendships were therefore outlawed in 1547 England in order to keep women confined to the home. Women were forbidden to “babble and talk” when meeting up. As a Black woman gossip has protected me from my own oppression and the injustices I am forced to face on a daily basis, particularly within the walls of a private, and predominantly white, institution. Yet, I am often told that my biggest form of protection is to speak less. 

The Epstein files are an amalgamation of 3.4 million pages of Jeffery Epstein’s personal emails, photos, and miscellaneous media that have been publicly released by The United States Department of Justice. The evidence Epstein’s personal ties to Trump and most of the wealthy elite, is indeed disturbing considering that the nefarious activities he is known for include sex trafficking, murder, torture, pedophelia, and child dismembering. Yet, when Epstein was initially indicted in 2008, he was charged with only one count of prostitution, and one count of soliciting prostitution from a minor before taking his life awaiting trial in a new 2019 case. 

 I can’t help but wonder: if the Epstein files were full of Black people, how many arrests, prison sentences, and public outrage would there be? Race and status have everything to do with who gets punished and who gets protected. Black men are the most feared and criminalized in America while Black women are the most disrespected. Even in death, Epstein and everyone involved on his dreadful island are being protected. What seems to dominate the public conversation are the censorship of certain names from the files, and various conspiracies.  Everyone is whispering about Selena Gomez and  Jim Carrey possibly being clones, when we should be talking about how the release of the files confirms government’s complicity with  gruesome rape, pedophilia, sex trafficking, and cannibalism of all and babies. The government made this public, yet people are still speculating whether it’s true because they can’t fathom anyone would spend their time murdering infants and eating them while still attached to the umbilical cord even though it’s historically been normalized before to slaves and freed Black people. 

Slave owners would feed Black babies to alligators as bait, turn them into leather shoes/purses, use our hair to stuff their couch cushions, and ate the slaves on transatlantic slave trade ships after reaching starvation from months on sea. The “cargo” of slaves would be intentionally overpacked because slave owners knew they would “lose cargo,” they knew they would get hungry. Black people were objects perceived to be void of red blood, so it was okay for them to kill us. Even picnics in the U.S. are historically events of food and togetherness for white people to eat and drink while watching public Black lynchings. They would quite literally “pick a nig.” At least the devil Christians created stayed underground in the afterlife waiting to burn us, but the real white devil was the institutions who valued our lives so little they were satisfied ripping unborn babies from Black mothers’ stomachs with daggers for fun. 

In The Delectable Negro, Vincent Woodard writes about how the cannibalism of Black people is deeply rooted into our country’s patriarchy. Cannibalism is indeed reflected in  the Epstein files. A new wave of horror social cannibalism is white people wanting to open our skin up, walk around in it, appropriate our hair, our roots, our dialect, and wear us as a costume until there is nothing left, until we are silenced so much our entire existence becomes simply  gossip. They ate us and then stole the term you ate like our history is game. America thrives off the image of civilized society, “land of the free,” but these violent Black histories are scrubbed,  painted to be old rumor gossip in public education. 

I spent my Valentine’s night scrolling through the Epstein library. My Black fatigue is knowing that if white people’s cannibalism is documented  from 1837 until the mid 19th century, whose to say they ever stopped eating us? In some of the Epstein emails on file, there are claims that the babies taste like “cream cheese” at their non-stop “pizza parties.” 

Pedophiles are known to have codes using food related language. An email sent on July 16, 2009 from Epstein to unknown wrote, “there are millions of babies, very little good vegatble cream cheese.” The responder replied, “Lol, I don’t know if cream cheese and baby are on the same level…” Another email from Mark Tramo to Epstein on Sept. 13 reads, “Was just reading today that newborns will suck on a pacifier more vigorously if it triggers playback of a recording of her/his mother’s voice notes than another woman's voice. Have you read David Brook’s Social Animal?” My heart rate increased reading this eerie email with the context I know from hundreds of photos of children in the database, and other emails confirming ritualistic sacrifices of African American males, or “babies being dismembered, their intestines removed and individuals eating feces from these intestines” as written in an email about a supposed interview with the FBI on Aug 28, 2019 at 12:01 PM. The names to most of these documents are blurred by the FBI, but we do see one of the emails being sent from WALTER.HARKINS@nypd.org. “Vegatble” was repeatedly spelled wrong often throughout these files, hinting it as a possible code word.   

At this moment I’m fucking scared. The big question is why are they allowing me to know what I know through millions of evidence. Is this a distraction from something far more dangerous to the existing order? Or does the government think that their brain-washing was so effective that no one will  do anything? Conspiracies are circulating that AI was created so people wouldn’t believe the atrocities that are circling the internet. The possibility of Britney Spears being lobotomized through several doctoral visits by a friend of Epstein is being speculated. Black women across America are going crazy knowing more than ever how fetishized we are, and debated of our own humanity. 

Gossip is defined as unconstrained, untrue, and malicious spoken thought. For years women have been called hysterical, and are pressured to keep quiet because gossip is defined as unconstrained, untrue, malicious spoken thought, but when born in a system that consumes girlhood, it’s necessary to stay safe. I wish I could unknow what I know, but I am that much safer now and I will never eat another bagel again.

Sarina Greene

Art by Jodie Baek