Soul Cries

It makes me sad the amount of injustices that have been done to us Black people. When we revolt and fight for what we believe in then we are the ones left looking as if we are acting like savages. When will a time come where our voices will be heard, our murdered children, black men and women will be given justice for the brutal acts committed against us. We live in a society that fears us. We cannot walk into a store without being targeted as a possible shoplifter. Just based on our appearances  we are deemed  ghetto, loose, poor, gang member, criminal, prostitute and the list goes on. Our sexuality has been ravished and murdered and given back to us as something disgusting. I am tired of feeling like we are fighting a fight that can never be won. When will our voices be heard. When will our people rise up and become CONSCIOUS of our heritage. When will JUSTICE prevail for beautiful black life. We live in a society not built to protect us or honor our heritage, so when will we stop conforming to a world that works to desensitize us to who we really are. Black Life does Matter. All life matters so lets do our best to become conscious and realize the possibilities that lies within us to create change. 

Being an ethnic studies student has really shown me how much colonialism has damaged many cultures. As we go into Thanksgiving and the reasons it is celebrated in America, really saddens me. Native people experienced tremendous amounts of cruelty and to celebrate Columbus discovering the "New World" is to celebrate GENOCIDE.  I wrote a poem in response to some of the history I have learned about Native American culture. Lets become conscious. Educate ourselves and our children. We must unify and rise up as the tribal people that we innately are. 

Poem 11/2014

Genocide. the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.

The extinction of a people

Based on trees, cut down and formed into paper

Dyed green so it became more valuable than the life of a human being

If you cut I bleed

If you cut we bleed

So what makes your white skin better than my brown and black sisters and brothers

Who died because of your curiousity

You sailed on ships to explore and discover a world that existed before

Columbus even thought to sail the sea

First contact meant the end to civility and the start of

savages conquering what did not belong to them

Contact.  A condition in which two or more individuals or groups are placed in communication with each other.

If that’s the case

First contact lacked its tact

a keen sense of what to say or do to avoid giving offense; skill in dealing with difficult or delicate situations.

Con

Because my European counterparts

They identified more with the con in contact

Thanks for the gifts you brought over to thee

Your diseases wrapped in pretty boxes of bubonic plague

Helped to devastate the lives indigenous people

Not immune to such terrible things

The land on which we live today

Was obtained based on the blood and tears

Of aboriginees