Women of Color: Writing Our Stories
It’s not about what we got, it’s about how you got over, walked over, through, inside, flip over, and on top of a people from greatness.
It’s not about what we got, it’s about being abandoned by our country and dissed by the media. It’s about being in a space, a place where no one knows your name. It’s about the breakdown in communication and the forced assimilation into spots where you are not welcomed. It’s about the loss of life, the loss of love, the loss of community, and the loss of culture.
It’s about the ma’am(s) that you will never understand.
It’s about the farewells with no jazz funerals
or second-lines. Our celebrations.
It’s about the force whiteness for niceness
Which stems from your guilty conscious for all the wrongs you have done
And not undone.
It’s about blatant injustice served on a silver platter.
It’s about being an American and being denied justice.
I saw,
I experienced an America that did not look like America to me.
But there it was.
And here I am.
A survivor.
It’s not about what we got,
if we got,
because most got gainked on your gots.
It’s about how you got
When you got
what you got
and how you got - From the backs of Americans
It’s about how you mistreated God’s people: Po’ folks and Black folks. This whole Katrina thing is (the current tense) about race and class.
By Theresa Crushshon – Fleur de Lis
Email April 5, 2009