Ain’t it a Crime Story?
No, i will not stop telling my story until i’m done.
And i won’t quit searching into the fastened closets
Nor will i leave the old dusty dank library shelves
Until i learn all of my people’s heritage hidden within
i walked past a bus stop yesterday and heard a white man
Muttering racist profanity under his alcohol-ridden breath
His shoes were worn dirty cracked and falling to pieces
i guess what disturbed him the most was that mine weren’t
When slavery wasn’t a crime no one cared about spewing discord
It was certainly normal to burn crosses in front of people’s houses
Or spit on the black kids when they tried to go to school with white kids
And we all know that the lynching’s were sanctified by those in power
When white people get provoked, they say it’s justified indignity
When black people get riled, they call it deplorably primitive
There’s still a black man dying every 21 odd hours from police aggression
But if you mention the words defund the police, you’re a traitorous communist
And now that social media has become the new drug
We get to see all of the paranoid racist Karens in panic
Abusing black folks for walking, talking, eating,
running, golfing, swimming, breathing while black
The we heard of the term micro-aggressions and realized
That is our daily experience and our white friends who show it know it-now
White supremacy leers at us from almost every street corner poster
While white fragility leaves us depleted discouraged dissatisfied depressed
We are then accused by our well-meaning liberal European friends
Of playing the race card, crying wolf, bluffing victim, singing the blues
If the Jewish can forget the atrocious genocide done against them
Then surely, we can grow up and finally forget our decimations? Truly?
Post-traumatic slave disorder is dismissed as a nasty myth
And aren’t all the black men languishing in jail guilty?
Yes, there is black on black crime, but don’t white folk hurt each other?
While European missionaries still frequent Africa bringing bibles and not food
i remember once listening from my bedroom window
As a young white german kid told my black child that he should wash
So that he could be as clean and as white as he was
i have never been so proud of my son as i was on that day
Our stories need the telling and we need to be the ones telling them
Not glorifying, ignoring, denying, not leaving out the good or the bad parts
Rather accepting acknowledging and working through the pain
Perhaps then we would have no need for anger, as we do now.
Camille Elaine Thomas
September 15, 2021
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