PAD Challenge Day 2: Order of Operations (PEDMAS)

PAD Challenge Day 2: Write an express poem.

Order of Operations (PEMDAS)

According to America’s

standardized order of operations,

being a Negro in America

is an arithmetic expression.

We are grouped by 

(race and ethnicity),

once transported in brackets,

preserved and valued

as commodity (traded…sold)

to the New World

where our freedom 

was (exempted)

and names (redefined)

without consent.

Modern African (Americans)

historically, distinguished

as Colors to an actual color (Black)

Not once perceived as (human),

always categorized as something (ugly)

(The N-word. Coon. Monkeys. Apes.)

Our grandmothers

(good cooking, cleaning Mammies)

Our mothers

(called Sapphires when the helix of our

DNA exposed the world to black diamonds and pearls)

Our Fathers (a boy or a buck)

(never seen as a Sir or a Gentleman…)

Our children

(Sambo or Pickaninnies…today’s (thugs)

All of the above… always seen (suspicious)

Let America tell her story,

even she knows,

She has more freedom

significantly than (blacks)…

It took Juneteenth… 

to be Harriet to us..

to somewhat extract us from parentheses…

just to place us back at the base of our roots of

“Black Liberation” to exponentially multiply black power

First black man and woman to…

First black boy and girl to…

Black owned…

Black neighborhoods...

Blacks buying blocks for Black Wall Streets

and Historically Black Colleges and Universities

because

Black Codes and Jim Crow,

America’s famously known common advisors and divisors,

(don’t forget to secretly factor in

lynching, bombing, and massacres)

made it their priority to keep Blacks

from the appropriate additions of

basic human rights plus civil rights

just to live as equals;

when we never asked to

be featured in this problem

or had the desire to

subtract anything from anybody anyway…

💜 D'ElegantOne