PAD Challenge Day 29: Total No. of Blacks
PAD
Challenge Day 29: Write a total (blank) poem.
Total
No. of Blacks
Tell
me,
How
many blacks are
well
and alive in America, right now?
How
many made it into 2020?
Go
ahead, give me your best
count
by your ones or twos.
By
any means necessary,
please
exclude the
three-fifths
compromise.
Go
ahead,
count
away,
do
not forget the ones
standing
next to you too!
I
know, you do not know them,
but
count them anyway.
Just
in case the Census 2020 forget.
The
qualitative and quantitative
research
studies exclude them.
The
white scientist, doctor, mathematician,
statistician,
news, politicians,
teachers,
leadership, and institutions
forget
them after they take their position.
Go
ahead.
Count
them out,
while
they are still alive, right now.
While
you are adding up,
please,
do not question our existence
or
add our education, social class,
and
insurance by the shade of our skin.
‘Cause
looking at Crayola,
we
are not really black.
We
come in different shades.
But
we are counted as one under
the
breathing, teary eyed, and bloody days of
oppression,
suppression, and depression.
Go
ahead,
if
you must, use your
fingers
and your toes,
or
any other instrument
that
you may know.
Count
carefully,
but
do not ask about
our
grandmothers’ high blood pressure,
our
mothers’ infant mortality,
our
fathers’ heart disease,
our
first cousins’ asthma,
our
second cousins’ stroke,
our
third cousins’ weight,
our
uncles’ cancer,
our
aunts’ diabetes,
our
sisters’ and brothers’ mental health,
our
friends addictions and HIV/AIDs status,
if
you do not understand the history
behind
miscounting blacks thus far.
Please,
do not ask, or
pretend
to care like you care,
if
you intend to violate
the
Hippocratic Oath,
the
Belmont Report,
and
HIPAA while
short-changing
social change.
D’ElegantOne
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Photographer: Anonymous Taken duing one of my art gallery visits Circa 2016 |
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