How would you feel?
If everywhere
The images you saw were black
Black leaders
Black models
Black teachers
Black policemen
Black.
If Black ruled
The Oscars would be #soblack
And the token would be white
How would you feel
If you were just a mere token
A mere afterthought
If for hundreds of years your ancestors were
Bought and sold
Life was priceless but everyday yours was priced
You belonged to someone
You were inferior to their superiority
Not allowed to learn to read or to write
Cuz your animal like capacities don’t allow it
So the blacks got rich off your backs
How would you feel
If even with the yoke of slavery broken
Still you struggle to make ends meet
While keeping to your side of the street
Still downtrodden
Under the oppression of segregation
And your forced submittance
To the Race superior
Living in a country under democracy
Yet having no choice in the bureaucracy
Even their women are above you
Evidence by their suffrage
Earned ages before you
But that’s history
Yesteryear’s story
Why rehash what is passed
When we live in the now?
Never mind the males of your people
Are frisked and imprisoned
For the slightest infringement
Your women are told they aren’t
“Classically beautiful”
And that their hair is a mess
Their lips are too big
Their butts are too big
But when those who rule
Tweak and twerk themselves to look the same
It is praised
Imagine ancestors displayed in zoos
Shuttled like cattle
Slaughtered like animals
Raped and impregnated at whim
Men taught to be unfaithful
Men not allowed to be fathers
Men who can’t even be men
Imagine police the enforcers of the law
Gunning your people down in the street
Being made aware of the colour of your skin
Every Single Day
And then told to stop seeing colour
Is it hard to imagine?
Is it impossible to fathom?
Oh! You’re not black?
That’s why then.
This is an ode to black
And ode to those who feel the need to be sorry
An ode to those who have done
An incredible job of staying alive
An ode to the most forgiving race
Despite what has happened to them throughout history
An ode to those who wore the mask so well
Even when the rainbow was enuff
This is an Ode to Us.
The Inimitable Asha Oluremi. 