In light of the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, I shared three pieces on here earlier this week and received an email from my former teacher about them, who, in turn, shared a piece he had written last summer after the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case. This piece is seriously deep and amazing and is very much pertinent to today's circumstances. Enjoy!
Where were you when it happened?
When the lynch mob arrived,
and the court of public opinion
put blackness on trial?
Me? I was still thinking –
thinking, of the color of my skin.
My skin: a hood of exceptional power.
If exercised,
it is the hood of a Klansman.
Of institutionalized oppression;
of enslaved Africans in state penitentiaries;
of confined minds in sterile elementaries.
But I’m not one to stand up for white supremacy.
Now? Now I’m Feeling.
Believing.
The color of MY skin,
is a hood of exceptional power.
If challenged,
it is a hood of solidarity.
Of consciousness and community,
with my black and brown children and their families;
of seeking to dismantle what you seek to uphold;
of hope –
I hope audaciously to struggle against the status quo.
Where were you when it happened?
When the lynch mob arrived?
Did you stand up –
pop the right hood up –
when the death of a child
became the trial of our brothers?
Where will you be when our next child is taken?
What are we going to do
when the lynch mob arrives again?
Thank you, McIntire! I swear I read this over and over again; it is extremely powerful!
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