Posted inPoetry

What is Black?

by Mesro Dhu Rafa'a November 12, 2020February 27, 2022

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What is Black?

by Mesro Dhu Rafa'a, Prison Journalism Project
November 12, 2020

<h1>What is Black?</h1>
<p class="byline">by Mesro Dhu Rafa'a, Prison Journalism Project <br />November 12, 2020</p>
 
<p>Is Black a skin color or a status?<br />Does it describe my mind’s apparatus?<br />Can it describe my creativity’s atlas?<br />Who says to be Black is below average?<br />Am I still Black for having no car with hydraulics?<br />Am I still Black for having to learn Ebonics?<br />What is being Black, an idea or demographic,<br />or an ethnicity, or a denial of credit plastic?</p>
<p>Work hard and save up for what?<br />So people can tell me to go back to my hut?<br />So people can call my mother a slut?<br />So people can see me and clap their windows shut?</p>
<p>Why is it that all you who are kin to me<br />get assassinated by police entities?</p>
<p>On the other hand, why be a victim?<br />Why subject myself to someone else’s religion?<br />Who are you to insult my character and vision?<br />Where do you get off teaching racism to my children?<br />Why do these questions even come up?<br />How come no one reports when Black Lives are snuffed?<br />If Black Lives Matter so much,<br />how come Black lives don’t matter to us?</p>


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Is Black a skin color or a status?
Does it describe my mind’s apparatus?
Can it describe my creativity’s atlas?
Who says to be Black is below average?
Am I still Black for having no car with hydraulics?
Am I still Black for having to learn Ebonics?
What is being Black, an idea or demographic,
or an ethnicity, or a denial of credit plastic?

Work hard and save up for what?
So people can tell me to go back to my hut?
So people can call my mother a slut?
So people can see me and clap their windows shut?

Why is it that all you who are kin to me
get assassinated by police entities?

On the other hand, why be a victim?
Why subject myself to someone else’s religion?
Who are you to insult my character and vision?
Where do you get off teaching racism to my children?
Why do these questions even come up?
How come no one reports when Black Lives are snuffed?
If Black Lives Matter so much,
how come Black lives don’t matter to us?

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Mesro Dhu Rafa'a

George Coles-El is a poet, writer, graffiti artist and tutor. He writes under the pen name Mesro Dhu Rafa’a, which means “stand with the sun, master of the ascendants.” During the COVID-19 pandemic, he completed an anthology of writings called "Unsung Hero." He is incarcerated in California.

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