A c.o. asked if I were racist
surprised by the question’s basis
because it was the title of a book she read without flipping thru the pages
isn’t that a cliché…
but this is the same narrow minded perceptions our society has created
what?…
would she prefer my seeking of knowledge be nameless or faceless
or was it because the end result of what I seek started and ended with black faces
what is depth, when the inside is hidden to the uncaring consumer absorbing a calzone
so which part of the title was the threat? The conditions that face black people in America, or the valley of dry bones?
we all know that answer…
How could I speak on a subject in which in her 50 plus years it hasn’t even been relevant?
How can I speak of color, skin, the science of melanin, only as difference not as supremacy, if her history, cascades its skeletons?
She only seemed to understand the fact of me having close white friends, well I guess it really was a surprise
How can I give in and make allowances for the cliché, ‘ignorance is bliss’ while willful ignorance is just as incendiary to our society’s demise?
How can she believe that everyone experiences life the same, how can she be that blind?
Then I realized…
She only knows what’s been shown, whether conscious or unconsciously learning to deny and downplay
Maybe she doesn’t know that black is more than a color
Though color is not identity
Black is enshrined deeply with culture
Though most, of it has turned ghost, from being poached, since arriving on the Virginia coast, by boat, and the ensuing reconditioning played culprit
Maybe I should’ve told her
How black has become a stereotypical synonym posted
as loud and boastful
Materialistic, objectifying, absent fathers, promiscuous big booty crazy women, ignorant sagging slang talkin rappers, criminals, drug dealing abusive illiterate fast running, high jumping, angry gang banging wild yet lazy monkeys, the engineers of an inciting riotous hip hop cult, not culture!
but if that’s true, then despite the lack of reparations, and every movement and economic progression stunted, by governmental forceful tactics and Willie lynch syndrome inhabited, what you deem problematic, I call it coping
and religiously hoping
though this cult like culture, has been stolen and resold for exposure
I could’ve explained in depth our resilience, strength and accomplishments, but in all honesty her response may provoke me
to a black child, which the world doesn’t know, seeming to have given him a cold shoulder
his dreams look no further than a poster and apolster
disbelieving of making it to be an adult, let alone not understanding the point in cementing his vote/and inhabiting the mind of becoming a broker
he may chase solicited fame, designed to saturate his brain, which in the end will make him broker
this isn’t a word, but he wouldn’t know it
a rapper is just a misunderstood urban poet
that dreams to swallow pride enshrined in Moet
to numb the pain of facing a society that doesn’t understand him and a legal system he shadow boxes with as if an opponent
which preys on his lack of understanding and color, poaching-waiting to pounce on his worst moment
the problem is, I could’ve explained it all, and just as I tried
I realized I was talking to a door by the look in her eyes
It’s sad the unknowing narratives that rule our lives
clichés are shrugged off as a collective of agreeable and undebated truths, but the real truth is that saying, “ignorance is bliss” is just another ignored lie
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