Can you hear that?

That's the sound of oppression being hidden behind the obnoxious ringing of "regulation".

Drowned in the sound of my brothers and sisters' chains clinking.

 

Can you see that?

That over there?

No, not the white neighborhood with Ms. Animosity.

To the left, the black neighborhood with Mr. Poverty standing front and center.

Yeah, the hood.

 

That's where the criminals and gang bangers stood.

Where they crossed their hands behind their backs after being pushed to the ground.

Police officers showing up a while later after gunshots go off round after round.

Yeah, the hood.

 

But they fail to tell you something.

The hood isn't a trap for only the bad.

 

The black neighborhoods aren't full of criminals or ex-convicts nor felons in the making.

They're full of people trying to make it through life

Any way they find just to make it will suffice.

Whether it be getting A's in class or spending their days selling knock-off ice.

 

They're the ones we should look out for.

The ones we should put in front of the heat of spotlights

Instead of alone trying to survive in this world of ice.

We should not be stereotyping our people just because we see more black citizens show up on our TV screens getting arrested

Than appearing on our Facebook feeds, receiving a degree.

 

I will not stand for seeing another person being discriminatory towards a person of the black community

For having held their hands above their head once or more in their lifetime.

I listen to the whoop-whooping of police cars with an empty, lamenting heart,

Knowing 9 times out of 10, they'll be taking away another loved one of a family.

Knowing that their sirens bring heartbreak, betrayal, and hell

Rather than laws only being enforced or holding welcoming smiles on their faces with the ring of a doorbell.

 

I know what they see us as.

To them, we are scum on the bottom of their shoes.

We are the gum that their society chews.

Clacking and smacking, chewing and spewing out the rumors and verbal abuse that they put us through in their minds by

Scrutinizing and marginalizing us with their eyes.

 

Their eyes that glare at us while walking into stores.

They think just because we have our hoods on while inside that we'll try to steal,

But we're hiding.

Hiding from the shame we feel

The burden of the weights you put on us just because we try to make the American Dream real.

Real enough for us to grasp on to.

 

Tangible to the point where we don't have to fight our way out of the chains our society had made for us

The chains that you shackled on us

Trying to suppress us in the mess that you made.

The stressing and compressing of those weights on our chests from the words that you gave.

 

Well, I want to set the record straight.

And listen closely because I won't make the same mistakes.

 

I am not just a color you can sort into one of your boxes of who to suspect whenever a crime arises.

I am an individual, a woman, an inquisitor who holds her own curiosity in the light of her eyes.

And I will not take what you try to justify as right

With a nod and smile but a grip of steel to wring out the droplets of lies and prejudice from the towel of truth

To then hang it on a clothesline and let it air dry

 

Because the answers to my questions you provide won't do anything but keep me from understanding how the world is meant to be:

Oppression-free and easy for the leader of us to be the same gender and complexion as me.

~ 10:04 PM