This is a poem that my classmate Kym Littlefield wrote for our black studies class. It is wonderfully written, but I wish I had a recording of him reading it because his presentation is incredible!
Produced by the slaves, Orange Cotton grew up tough. Orange Cotton, indirectly, is the topic we discuss.
There is no beaten path – we aren’t supposed to be doctors and lawyers. We are rappers and ballers. We don’t invest in the country’s welfare, the country invests welfare in us. We laugh loudly, wear flashy clothes, and start bad trends. We are the darkness of our country and our blackness can offer no light to anything worth while. But carry it well, because I can think of nothing heavier than this stigma. I can think of no bulk or boulder greater than that which lies on our back. And those stigmas that lie on are back are lies indeed.
With this great consummation that tortures our back and the fight we endure – we fight the same battles as those in mythology. Atlas would be proud – he’d call us his prodigy. We push this boulder uphill – Sisyphus seeks our methodology.
Specifically, it is no one’s fault – I think we were biologically predisposed. When we seek similarities, all the differences get exposed. For our own survival, we yearn – to cling for labels. Even when they prevent us from that which we are able.
It is the great flaw of man when our instincts make us vulnerable to extinction. And the way we seek distinction begins to blur our thinking and even distorts our depiction, subjectivity rendering our written history fiction. This is the story of the history of our past. Misprinted as fiction but we can illuminate it at last.
I have proof to counterprove. Many arguments from which to choose, but from my experience, the black truth has been abused. I wish you could feel what I feel when I imagine Orange Cotton. And the bitterness I taste because that awful fruit is rotten.
Our identities, black, white, asian, and other – no matter how subtle – aren’t small enough to fit in a SAT bubble.
It took less than a year at a private school to teach me that I was black, being black in public school couldn’t teach me all dat. Living in the hood, I was just a face in the crowd – one year later it was easy to point me out. And so the same truth exists, change and reality never kiss, but today I woke up different – I woke up with something missing. I had Orange Cotton on my mind, I pictured her growing up in the field. An undeveloped asset - far more than the crops she yields.
I have a white family, I’ve gone to white schools for thirteen years, I’ve lived in a white neighborhood for 5, but I know I have an accurate definition of what it means to be black.
It doesn’t mean I’m guilty, it doesn’t mean I’m the victim either. It doesn’t mean we’re all southern Baptists, although I’m a believer. It doesn’t mean I like watermelon, even though it’s my favorite fruit. It doesn’t mean I start fads, like when shoes were see-through. It doesn’t mean I’m “hood”, it doesn’t mean I like rap. Causality and correlation – none of that means being black. It means I am the ancestor of the American oppressed, and I choose to identify with them – may they peacefully rest.
Identity is self-prescribed and self diagnosed – you can seek your identity dose by dose.
Unspeakable things unspoken to be black in America means your dreams get broken. I remember the first time life taught me evil – when my white friend first taught me – I couldn’t be equal. I never wanted to stand out again, you made me dream of being average. No kid should dream this small. I don’t want my dreams – so you can have it.
You defined me, and I can’t let those labels limit me, so I tried to trace roots to bring strength back within me. Orange Cotton – no, that’s not the name of a crop, that’s the name of my humble hero – not to name drop. Slavery is so recent it’s only been six generations. If seven’s the number of completion – maybe our kids unite the nations.
But we, too, weigh on ourselves. Society’s gravity does apply pressure to us, but we give the pressure a mass to apply it to. When these stigmas disappear, we won’t have to go out of our way to avoid them.
I have told you all of what I know about Orange Cotton, but you don’t know the horrors I’ve imagined. The slave is whipped in the fields as she works tirelessly. The terms benefits or 9 to 5 apply not where hatred grows by the acre. Remorse isn’t a factor between slave and master. The horrors she saw and the darkness she lived in, gave me an idea of identity. My grandpa once told me, his grandmother was a slave – her name was Orange Cotton, and on my heart her name is engraved."
No comments:
Post a Comment