Welcome To Color Blind America

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“I pledge blind allegiance
To the divided states of one of the Americas
And to the Republic,
for which it stands (or kneels).
One nation under God
Divisible, with no liberty
And justice for some.”

That sounds about white...I mean right. With the current racial climate of these un-United states, many things weigh heavy on my heart. Then, as I was reading poems from Frank X. Walker’s “Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers,” I started thinking about this little thing we call freedom. In one of his persona poems, Walker compares the murder of Emmett Till to baking a pecan pie and it’s grotesquely painful - thinking about what Emmett Till suffered, what his mother suffered, and what we suffer.

That same day, I was talking in groupme with my organization Younge Black Artist Movement and someone asked, “What can a blind man see?” I wrote a poem in response to this query where I alluded to Walker’s poem because it hit me. The danger of color blindness is that we forget how race has functioned in society. Race shouldn’t matter, but unfortunately, it does.

Here’s my response to the question:

“Braille.” 11/09/17
By: Jay. Tha Poet.


My name isn’t Stevie,
But my mind sometimes wanders
As I ponder
On the state of our world.
Being Black
Is treated as a handicap.
After all,
An eye for an eye
Makes the whole world blind.
You’ll find in these fine lines
That trace our beginnings
To the present that
​I just present the facts
Mixed with my interpretation
Of our lacerations.
We are art
Deserving of the utmost appreciation.
We are God’s creation.
Him.
Her.
With Black feminism,
I do concur.
The pot I stir
Is to reaffirm the worth
Of our race
Along with our genders.
Woman is tender,
But she’s no chicken.
She’s no servant
For your kitchen.
Listen...
To the vibrations of the empowerment I’m boiling.
Feel the vibes
On your fingertips.
Take double dips in memorizing
The patterns
Like a recipe.
Follow the instructions.
Trust your senses.
A blind man can see the senseless violence
Because the white silence is so crippling it’s something you can feel;
So loud it’s an oxymoron;
So potent it penetrates the nostrils.
Frank X. Walker
Said it first.
The murder of Emmett Till was one of the worst tragedies we’ve faced - the way they battered his brown face
And it puffed like a pecan pie
To be swallowed like a pill to help us die -
Strangle us of our sensibilities.
A blind man has the same abilities
As Black America.
We don’t need to see the fire
To know that we are burning from Dragon tales
From the supposedly Grand Dragon.
No we’re not dragging this tail.
It’s simply strangling us
And we are breaking free.
What more do we need to see
To know that we are living in Hell?
I want this poem to make you feel what I’m saying,
So I guess I’ll call this “Braille.”