bravenak
bravenak's JournalSix months and fourhundred years of peacful protest.
When was the last time you had to protest acts of institutional racism against yourself and those who look like you? It's been fourhundred years and six months, how much longer?
I suppose we should just march and get beat and fire hosed and policed dogged until you think it's been long enough? How many years of racism and poverty and police viokence are you willing to take while singing 'We shall overcome' watching your sons become targets of the system? I think it's been long enough. Ain't no amount of marching and praying going to work if it hasn't worked yet!
Just let me know how much abuse and fear for the lives of your family and how many indignitites you ard willing to put up with all day everyday while singing and marching. How many cheecks you have left to turn when the cops break your sons neck. Let me know how much suffering we deserve while marching quietly and peacefully...
The child poverty rate among single parent housholds is extremly high NOW.
I believe that welfare reform has alot to do with that as it was the only thing keeping many children from starving.
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22. At some point in the conversation, white privilege deems that white folks who are unhappy with how a person of color dares to talk about racism will somehow be magically transformed into the real “victims”.
Did you just call me a nigger?
Such dirty ugly people, and they all smell of wet dog and mayonnaise, am I right? Nigger.
When you call white people crackers, they have a right to call you nigger.
Funny, I never called anybody any names. Not even you. I will post your response to me for posterity.
Dear Jury... Once again I am copying this post to prove I am not lying about the things people say to me on DU. Please do not hide my post.
Here goes.....
"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we have been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."
That quote inspired me that year. I was suffering from a serious bout of depression and it touched me inside. I realized in that moment that I could do whatever the fuck I wanted to. And it felt good to me as a black woman to free myself from the mental prison that our society forces onto Black Americans. No longer are we the char women, the floor scrubbers, the housemaids. My mind was free.
Now, I do do whatever the fuck I want. Just like a white person. Feels so good to hold my head up high and know I am just a valuable as the rest. And that I owe nobody anything that I don't owe to myself first. I changed. And it was good.
America the Free
Twas a time of despair
A breathless sigh,
a strangled cry
A whispered prayer
Untaxed loosies on the low
Swisher sweets on the floor
Abhorrent no knock warrant
Stop and frisk,
cuff the wrist
A taste of torment
Young boy playing in the park
A bullet hits the mark
Mothers of black boys cry
They stain his name,
ignore her pain
A life song unfinished
Fumbled gun in the stairwell
A father fell, her mother’s hell
Your spacious skies tell big lies
Of amber waves through
teargas haze
From sea to Shining sea
Purple mountains and
separate fountains
Bear fruits of pain
and violent shame
America the Free
When Justice died
When justice died that day
I cried for oh so long
I looked for liberty and freedom
And sang a sad sad song
Justice had been ill
For all of my life
Oppression and bigotry
Her struggle and her strife
She stood upon a hilltop
Saying she, was there for all
Just as soon as I reached her
Lady Justice took a fall
Her wrist were shackled
There was blood on her sleeve
The last thing she said was,
‘Get off me, I can’t breathe!"
There would be no trial
No jury to be sat
For the ones who killed Justice
Were policemen on attack
When Justice died that day
I cried for oh so long
I buried her with Liberty and Freedom
And sang our sad, sad, song
For me too. Help me cope.
I wrote one that made me feel better for a day this summer.
Here, I never finished it all the way.
If I had white privilege, I would know that it was there
It would be so obvious, I could see it everywhere
I would have never been stopped, while walking up my street
And had my person searched, from my head down to my feet
No one would ever say, you speak well, for your kind
Or told me that my possessions, could not possibly be mine
I would never have been told, to go back to from where I came
And even if it happened, it just wouldn’t feel the same
If I had white privilege I would use it all the time
How could I but help it, the Privilege would be fine
If I shared my privilege with other folks I know
Then I could make easier, the burdens that they tow
One day I'll finish and post it on a white privilege battle thread.
Blue
I never noticed this group until recently. I am in the process of getting together a collection and am adding more works to it. I wanted to share this one.
I had always wondered
what it would be like to
be someone else.
When I was little,
I would close my lids
Slip into the skin of another,
see the world through
a different pair of eyes.
Feel what they feel,
taste their mouth in mine,
See if they see colors the same.
You know?
Like,
What does blue look like to you?
I asked a man who was colorblind.
But he was high at the time.
And,
I never make sense, so
I left it alone. Though,
he did let me know
that,
Colors do not look the same.
Shame.
After that,
I never did wonder what it would be like
to be someone else.
You know?
Because,
what would I do if I lost the color blue?
I wrote a poem for America and you all here on DU.
We call ourselves the free,
but we cannot free ourselves.
Open secrets,
hidden in plain sight,
dusty tomes on our shelves.
Our society is ill,
sick,
in disarray.
America,
America,
who are you today?
Police state holding the mighty men,
safe in their keeps.
Looking down upon us;
lowly peasants and sheep.
Power to the people!
The words, so strong,
are but air, from our lips.
Words are merely wind;
but wind powers ships.
Old men molded the world,
and shaped the past.
They wrote the history,
they won at last.
But what man has made,
was not made to stay…
The old days are dead,
Yet they haunt us this day.
Don’t tell me what you were,
or what you’ve done.
How much you’ve taken,
how much you’ve won.
Your money,
your might,
you own the day!
America,
America,
we are on our way.
Old wounds not healed,
have blistered
and burst!
Our souls cry out
in desolation
and thirst.
A lustful hope,
a needful want,
that on a summer day….
America,
America,
will change the way….
We use and abuse,
rig the game to lose,
separate the browns from the reds,
the pinks from the blues,
the lights from the darks,
with the blacks put away.
Oh, America,
America,
the games you play.
Time for us all
to reunify the race
there is but one –
the human
same face.
Together we are one;
but separate,
just dust.
America,
America,
America or bust.
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Gender: Do not displayMember since: Thu Jan 31, 2013, 02:49 PM
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