Dear "White" People

Dear White people,

Laquan McDonald,

Rekia Boyd,

Korryn Gaines,

Bobby Hutton,

Antwon Rose jr.,

Stephen Lawrence,

Sandra Bland,

Tamir Rice,

John Crawford,

Eric Garner,

Sean Bell,

Akai Gurley,

Amadou Diallo,

Aiyana Stanley-Jones,

Freddy Gray,

Jonathan Ferrell,

Walter Scott,

Ezell Ford,

Stephon Clark,

Charleena Lyles,

Alton Sterling,

Philando Castile,

Micheal Brown,

Trayvon Martin,

Oscar Grant,

Julian Carter,

Prince Jones,

Ahmaud Arbery,

Michael Stewart,

Atatiana Jefferson,

Renisha Mcbride,

Breonna Taylor

And

Goerge Floyd.

We are humans too

Ironically we are the ones with hue,

Yet that is the basis of our deaths.

Our lives matter to God

But just not to you.

See, for me,

The ‘talk’

is something entirely

Different than what

it is to you.

Life and death

are the normalized conversations

in the lives of youngsters

who make up less of thirty percent

of our nation.

The same nation

that claims melting pot and diversity

lacking such ultimately meaning

That apparently our so called minority group

Of black people all look identical.

We all fit the same description.

Oh wait, you failed to mention

I do not have drugs or guns in my possession

just a comb

Or a an ice cream cone.

Is that a crime?

But it doesn’t matter because still

they kill our daughters and sons.

All because they thought they had the right one

and because of that

our blood runs

rampant

down the streets of red, white and blue.

But Rarely do those colors

Ever mean justice or peace,

they just mean you just got pulled over

and you might lose your life too.

A bystander is always

standing for the wrong cause.

Silence never won the war of any violence.

And it is never going to.

America is land of the free

and Home of the brave;

brave souls who continue to lose their lives

to mass injustice

and systematic oppression.

Nothing has changed.

Overseers are still searching

for their slaves,

The gut-wrenching truth is

the teargas,

the pepper spray,

the rubber bullets,

are the dogs,

the fire hoses,

the lynchings,

the cross burned,

the church bombed,

that killed four young girls.

An illegal and invisible coup

Tarnished this nation.

All the while still claiming equality.

See the names change,

but it is all still the same

hashtag black lives matter

hashtag since when?

The very minute we are born

we make enemies.

Targets on our backs till

The very minute we die,

small communities there to mourn.

All along a devised plan for mass genocide.

But if you can't die then we’ll take away your rights.

See, Our lives are often filled with so much strife

It is often too difficult to survive

Often we die so young

That our mothers are standing by the graves

Of their sons and daughters who left the world before

Them,

Leaving them

Questioning.

People continue to say let go

of the past.

But the past is repeating itself so often.

You see, our lives are taken

before we can even begin to let go

because we never get to see

our futures and

we really can't get over

something that never ever ended.

Our voices fall on deaf ears.

Until silence falls so deeply

That one can hear when

we carry our caskets

through the streets

Emmit Till

and

Rodney King.

Here we are again,

Progress is not visible,

And #icantbreathe.

How long can you hold your breath?

Because the air in my lungs are all I have left.

Doctor Martin Luther King Jr

Said “In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies

But the silence of our friends”

So the cancer spreading like wildfire is racism

The cure is in our hearts, spirits and minds

Yet we do not take the antidote for hate

And now this fire has been raging for centuries and

If you see a fire and you stand by

Then the people that die

Are on your conscience, right?

Nelson Mandela was wise enough to

know that innate human nature

does not allow for discrimination

that hate is a learned behavior

And if so, “love can be taught,

for it comes much easier to the

heart than its opposite”

But we must go beyond the wisdom and

quotes of leaders whose legacies

are still rising because

We are dying in the fire that you left to burn

So what if your ancestors started the fire

Legally you are an accessory to the crime

So Are we on your conscience yet?

Stereotypes constantly berate our humanity

and everyone seems to prove with each passing day

That Black lives don't matter

and they never have

Not in education

Not in health care,

Not in the so-called justice system

Not anywhere

Almost invisible

expect

Black is not invisible

so you “not seeing my color” does not help me

Color Blind is not a joke

What point does God make in

creating multiple ethnicities,

cultures and creeds

If the whole world was

only meant to be ignorant and blind

Of course, I don't mean anyone who is medically deficient in color vision

Just the colloquial definition

Because the melanin in my skin

according to many

Means I came out of the womb

A couple shades too dark

See I was born

Brown skin in the glowing sun

With curly hair that springs like wells

in the sahara desert of our homeland

Our homeland- including you

all of us originated from Africa

So when you tell me go back to where i came from

You are telling yourself the very same things

My umber eyes survey life

But I don’t see through the lens of

Black and white only through vibrancy of every color

Dreamt, imagined and endowed by our creator

There is beauty in every shade

of every thread

of every tapestry

I respect

all our shades of brown

and yet

There is no birth lottery with God

But again humanity has managed to

repeatedly create caste after caste

Only directly disobeying

and betraying what’s right

Based on Race, religion and even the type of employment

and the mayor says ‘being

black shouldn’t be a death sentence’

But yet it is

With every breath we take

we are marked extremely dangerous and criminal

Savages whose blood can never be fully ‘human’

We are not minorities

We are the majority

We have power that we are

not even fully aware of

Like Nat Turner’s slave revolt

we black and brown,

Indigenous and people of color,

Make up a majority of the world

Maybe that’s why they are so scared

of my sistas and brothas

Because being brown is synonymous with the word ‘thug’

But thug is really the hate you give

Because before letting a word slip out of my mouth

I am lying on the ground

Our voices are cut off

We can’t breathe

We are blackfish in seas of whiteness

because of gerrymandering, gentrification and ghettos

Therefore we don’t matter- no one made room for us

At the table

But it is not too late

And this fight is far from over

We can all change the past

by changing the future which

will soon become a part

of the past

that is finally the mark

when humankind realized

that we all bleed red and

we have no need to hate

the color of someone skin

but rather respect the

character they have in them

So do more

talk about it

because it is a shame when the

Thoughts on your mind

And convictions in your heart

never reach your lips

Stand up,

Bring your own chair,

Sit in,

Build your own table,

Until the entire globe has a seat

And can hear you clearly

Because when the world is silent

Even one single voice is POWERFUL