#bluerosesblueroses

“Black” is not a bad word. But it is powerful.

It is history in five letters. The same history that lurks in shadows

Tightens around necks like nooses

Stalks those who try so desperately to escape it

“Black” is not a bad word. But it is a hunter.

Whether it be in the 1600s back on an African plain where my ancestors hunted to survive

Just before becoming a target for an even crueler predator

Or today, when my people search for answers, search for clues about identity

Then try to mask it by bashing girls with un-permed hair or darker skin

But that was even present in the past. Why do people my age seem so afraid of color?

Fear is inevitable. And sometimes this place feels like a prejudiced play pen

Where the walls are discolored where the “For Whites Only” signs used to hang

Sometimes having the only brown skin in a pallid classroom does not feel so privileged

Sometimes these micro-aggressions get the best of me

When all I want to do is teach these folks some history

Like the importance of trees. And while some people were hanging stockings on mantels

Others were strung up and left to swing

So if you could lend a limb—some people’s mentalities got tangled in the knots

There are records in the stern voices of our fathers, the hips of our mothers, and the open palms of their children. Rallies in the laughter. Marches in the tears. 

Look at us. We recently celebrated the first black men in my family to graduate college in generations.

Just my being here is a success story. So why do statistics keep telling me that I’ll never see a cap and gown?

I shouldn’t have to be sorry for the way I was born and I shouldn’t have to be afraid of looking like a criminal just for the skin I’m in.

Look at us. We are striving. We are reaching. We are running toward oval offices and trying to catch up to the moon.

But at the same time we are running out of jail space, hand cuffs, and coffins for our youth.

We are running. Always moving. Maybe all this time we’ve been trying to avoid that history.

A label that has been infused into our skin cells. We cannot shake this off. We can flaunt it.

We cannot outrun a past that has tattooed itself upon our flesh.

 One of these days those spirituals will sound like lullabies again.

 “Black” is not a bad word, even if it is sometimes used as evidence for the prosecution. An excuse.