WARNING: This elegy (a mournful or plaintive poem) was originally published on Olivet Theory on March 18, 2021. If it is read out of context it can sound like a virulent harangue lauded unfairly at an inconspicuous adversary. To avoid proof-texting my poem or misquoting me, I advise the reader to visit and interact with the original published post in its entirety for context. Please enjoy.
The life of the negro hangs on the balance of white men fighting to enslave us and later emancipate us. On white men fighting to degrade us and later value us. On white men segregating us and later integrating us. On white men ousting us from high-end communities and later welcoming us back. Preventing our educational growth and later investing in our intellectual wealth. Exploiting and later banking on our success. Warring to mistreat us on the basis of race and later warring to deny the existence of their initial and now continued hatred for us on the basis of race.
Fighting to destroy our faith and later fighting to force faith into us. Doing everything within their power to keep us at the center of their depravity and at the same time the center of their redemption from that depravity.
We are the blemish on their rise to power and the agency through which they will wash their hearts white.
It is a white man’s pursuit to grant all men the right and freedom of speech but it is the white man who waged war and terror on black bodies should they speak of the injustices and evils they have experienced at the hands of white men.
We are forced to hate each other through time by white men and forced to take responsibility for our self-hatred by statistics produced by the same.
Our ghettos go from bad to worse, we’re granted grants and funds, degraded for the same, elevated and denigrated, all, by white men.
There is no freedom under whiteness but at the same time freedom only comes through whiteness.
Our scope of history is white. Our sciences are white. Our institutions are white. Our workforce executive leadership is white. Our bosses, managers, supervisors, and company owners are white.
Our beauty standards and manufacturers are white.
Few care or dare to say that whiteness exists as a result of exploiting everything that is not white.
I say that my thoughts are expressed through the mediums provided us by white men and at the same time, I may be shamed into silence and obscurity by white men.
It was white men who forced my ancestors into slave ships. Convincing my black ancestors that this was the best way to obtain peace, wealth, and posterity. Turn on each other for security, they were told. For wealth. Let us not even speak of the conditions my ancestor’s lands are in today, the state of disrepair and destitution at the hands of white men.
It was white men who ravaged black women and created mixed-raced children in the West. Mixed-raced people were later shunned and exposed to further rape by white men.
The sugar, coffee, tobacco plantations, and gold and diamond mines that so enriched and established western societies were all made available through slave labor on the backs, knees, uteruses, and lives of black people for the betterment of white men.
But where is our reward?
Again, it was freedom from one form of slavery in the field to slavery in the city.
It was the white man who instilled in us a rage so violent for them but one we so continually enact on one another.
How many revolts have taken place, from the first slave ship that crossed the Atlantic to the last? How many uprisings, revolutions, rebellions by blacks against whites, by slaves against slaveholders and we only call them uprisings, revolutions, and rebellions because it is wrong and evil for a slave to step out of the confines of his chains to scream for freedom!
For a maimed, blind, toothless, scarred, burned, tongue-less, earless, disfigured, overworked, malnourished negro to want something other than twelve-hour workdays, seven days a week, every year of his life, for life, however short and miserable that life would turn out to be is defined as rebellious but according to whom?
Whose narrative defines this want for liberty, freedom, and basic decency as a dangerous uprising deserving of a violent squashing?
It is the hegemony, the rule, the status quo, the foundation, and the prolonged devastation from the hands of white men.
Six hundred years of evidence is stacked up against this insidious dichotomy created by the culture that stood and still stands to benefit from creating whiteness and the verdict of humanity whole, humanity colored, humanity black, will come back as guilty.
Guilty of kidnappings. Brainwashing. Raping. Devastating. Liquidating. Exploiting. Maiming. Murdering. Profiteering. Never having enough black bodies to finish your devilish damning God-forsaken work of hell that you fought for half a thousand years to keep and for who and for what?
To think we could just so easily forget?
You’re guilty of willful amnesia. Guilty of ignorance. Arrogance and apathy. Guilty of prejudice, discrimination, and racism.
Guilty on all counts and the charges will continue to rain down upon you until you are reduced to the very thing you wanted to reduce negroes to but have failed miserably in the process.
The Heavens watch and they wait.
This insidious whiteness that permeates will one day cease to exist and the world may return or perhaps progress to a more mundane faction or tribal schismatic system where color isn’t a thing. Where color is just that, color. Not profit nor gain.
The Heavens watch and weigh-in, Whiteness, your time has come.
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