By Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta
It’s no light comment on our country,
To say that we openly and consciously
Condone a system in which race
Determines who breathes
And who should not breathe.
Whom we execute and
Whom we set free!
Take a walk down memory lane—
Revisit the slaying of the black boy named
Trayvon Martin in Sanford Florida.
Recall the killing of yet another black boy
By the name of Michael Brown
By a trigger-happy cop
In Ferguson in the State of Missouri,
In broad day light.
Remember the murder
Of the black man,
Eric Garner of Staten Island
By choke-hold tactics
By the police in New York.
Don’t forget the assassination
Of twelve-year old boy,
Tamir Rice wielding
A plastic gun by a vampire
In police uniform in Cleveland!
Our hearts still bleed
With anguish over the callous
Murder of George Floyd
In Minneapolis by police officers
Emboldened by institutionalized racism.
It's now crystal clear as it has been
In the past that race makes
Or mars in this land of the free!
Supreme Court acknowledges
That race plays a role in death penalties.
Yet has decided to gloss over it,
To all intents and purposes.
This form of selective amnesia
Has become the stock-in-trade of
White folks the world over.
A black person killing a white
Person in Oklahoma, Mississippi,
Virginia, Arkansas or North Carolina
Is more likely to get a death sentence
Than a white man killing a black man.
Racism has become so deep-rooted
In our psyche that it has now acquired
The veneer of normalcy!
Racism is enmeshed in daily parlance—
Niggers! Shit-holes! Illegal aliens!
It's everywhere in commercials,
It's buried in institutional practices,
School system has been re-segregated,
Racism is pervasive in the workplace,
Who's fooling who in these climes?
In social circles and everywhere,
Veiled racism is visible to the color-blind
Yesterday, Civil Rights Icon,
Rosa Parks said, ‘I’m tired.’
Today, she'd say 'Fuck y'all, I’m fed up!’
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