Injustice

Black and Beautiful

AN: Little piece I wrote for a competition coming up in July. I wrote it to be a mixed one and may add more later. First venting about history and then about current issues and then leaving an encouraging message for my people. That's about it. Enjoy.

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This country's flag to me symbolizes a lie.

Everyday I watch my brothers and sisters die

because police brutality is at an all time high.

Both inside and outside I cry

and every day I ask why?

The land of the free and the home of the brave.

When this country started out

before that flag even waved

my people were being enslaved.

It's obvious that things were messed up that way

I mean why do the opposite of what the constitution would say?

But those rights were never written for us

they were always meant to ignore us

and they still do it to this day.

Now they're supposedly free

and I'm clearly crazy for protesting the malarkey and ever prevalent inequality.

If that's true how is it fair that I need lessons of prevention on how to encounter police because their reactions and intentions for approaching me will be different to the ones they'd have approaching a white man?

If that is true how is it acceptable that when my people riot and destroy at the loss of their brothers and sisters they are called thugs and animals but when whites riot over sports and PUMPKINS they're hooligans and misguided instead of common criminals?

It's not true and I'll tell you why.

They're making money off the prisons

they kill and lock us up at 6x the rate of whites to keep us afraid.

Gentrification forces us into poverty living so bad our debts can't be paid.

But it'll come back to bite them one day.

We had a black Wallstreet, they dropped a bomb on it-

of our success they couldn't be tolerant.

So many black graduates can't find jobs

because black sounding names get fewer callbacks so they fill in a portion of the unemployment mob and are immediately and unfairly dubbed welfare rats.

The people on top have set the middle class against the poor.

They've started writing laws against the homeless,

No more I say, NO MORE!

Let us rise like the storm with the winds and rain.

Let us motivate ourselves with our pain.

Let us have open carry demonstrations.

Let us police our own neighborhoods

Let us invest back into our poor communities

because you know the officials aren't trying to do that good.

Let us be loud and proud

let us go back to our roots of African sun gods and big hair

let us praise our dark skinned companions

and rock our colors, braids,trades and flair.

We are not animals,

We are not welfare rats,

We are not novelties here for their entertainment!

Jovan Mays said that we're not black enough to eclipse their sun.

But I say we are black enough to blot out the hatred and ignorance and come out on top.

Sunni Patterson said our trials and tribulations come so that we might look death in the face and say we made it.

And make it we shall.

We are black and beautiful.

And we will rise to greatness again.