My mother grew up in Detroit
12 mile, Royal Oak Michigan
in the 50’s
where young children
privileged enough
to be white
played red rover in picket fences
just a pebbles throw from 8 mile rd
Americas most defining city suburb line
Where institutionalize racism learned to procreate
In a time when intergraded neighborhoods were considered unstable
‘Red lining’ was used a restrictive covenant that created an “invisible” barrier that determined where people of color could live and where they could buy homes
city officials drew their maps
and watch the cities sink, into soil
In these streets
The red lines run deep
Like the feet of disporatic peoples flee
and this city seems to be burning from the inside out
the realtors using skin as charcoal
the blacker the faster they burn
the happier the customers
who are not afraid to say “we want no color here”
but it aint just Detroit
Its Philadelphia
New York
Its how our communities turned ghettos began to burn
Best believe it’s the dirty south
Los Angeles
San Francisco
At Stanford
We learn these facts at a distance
In our suburban cul-de-sac bubble
Pretending that the “diversity” in our classrooms
Means we’ve come far
And that far is enough
Its my ethnic studies teacher saying that we don’t grow up knowing that students of color are under represented in university classrooms
Its my white classmates agreeing with the statement
it’s the brown bodies in the room that don’t even need to open their eyes to feel it
It’s the language
How it doesn’t seem to fit right on our tongues
It’s the history books ancients
It’s the process we go through to
Teach our selves to reason this is wrong
Never learning how to fix it
That would be too dangerous
It would darkness the line between us
As if sitting in this filth doesn’t
We play discussions with history
Like we didn’t learn the lesson
And We have read the lynching
How black bodies hung in the deep south
White men
Fronting whiter capes
Playing god
Making angles out of young boys
We watch as their halos fell bellow the neck line
Only gasping at the cracking noise
Of bone
To skin to rope
How something
Other than weight hung in the air those days
It is heat
It is Hate
It is screaming our name
So what happens when in Arizona
Black, Chicano, queer, and any ethnic literature other than white is banned from the classroom to the Furness
How fast are we burning now
When you add the books
When all you can read are white pages
When will there be room for our black and brown bodies in this institution
There is enough white between the lines without having the banish the words
Can you see the smoke rising?
The ink
Hanging
Can you breath through the hypocrisy
Or slice it
The irony
Can you taste it
How in the last two years
Unemployment went from 7 million to 16
While Worldwide, global wealth held by millionaires rose by 19 %
It is 2010
The red lines seems to have only thickened since the 50’s
The government is playing maintenance
While we are burning in the aftermath
Our homes
Are ground zero
No one comes to visit
No one sees anything but dirt
But just beyond 8 mile rd
There is a town
Where young children
Privilege enough to be white
Play red rover
Between picket fences
We can see them from where we hang
It is as if we can almost reach them
From the darkness
No comments:
Post a Comment