Embers: A collection of thoughts on racism

One cannot deny that it feels as if my sanity is being extracted from me with each day

How do I not become angry and bitter and remain joyous in a country that attempts to exterminate black joy

I’ve tried to meditate in open fields with flowers that dance as the wind blows

With trees whose leaves are caressed by the wind

Shortly I was overcome by a storm of pain in those calm winds

I involuntarily imagined the horrors of black people who once hung from such trees in such open spaces

Whose dead bodies dangled in the wind

Black bodies that extended from similar tree branches

I think of the flowers that may have been buried in blood from black bodies that were brutally beaten

How can the sweetest moments in life easily become so bitter

I’ve realized that because of racism, horror and bitterness can easily steal moments of sweetness

Oppression seeks to keep me disempowered but it has only stirred a hunger inside of me,

A hunger for absolute equality

It has sparked a fire inside of me to destroy the very system that seeks to destroy me as a black individual

It birthed a desire within me to disassemble all systems of oppression

This “broken” system was intentionally built to break black people

How do you call a system broken that was intentionally built to be unjust?

Injustice is embedded in the framework of the American system.

We have to continue striving to dismantle a system that seeks to dismantle our communities, our families, our rights, and our strength

We will demolish the racism that craves to demolish the black population, black futures, and black history

The fight for Black liberation must not end

We must make efforts until actual justice and change finally rings

I mean absolute change, often people think as the times change America racially progresses

That is false.

Racism has been changing and mutating into different forms

blanketing itself in different ways for centuries now

Racism has become skilled at invisibly cloaking itself and projecting itself through different systems

As time progresses we must not become naïve and our vision must not become dull or blurred

We mustn’t let our demand or fire for equality blow out as we age

We must keep a sharp eye, ear and sense for the forms in which racism may cloak itself

I’ve seen older people wash their hands then let go of the fight for freedom and settle for the way things are

Do not settle.

As you age always remember to keep an ember that burns for racial equality within you