by Tyson Amir
There are moments in American history where white folks out of fear, rage, anger, or some other arbitrary reason simply raided and razed entire black communities to the ground. The American narrative has memorialized certain moments of American suffering. Pearl Harbor is a red-letter date, and we are always told to remember 9/11. I am not making light of the loss of life at any time. Death perpetrated by heinous acts is always tragic. What's even more tragic is when your own country is the perpetrator and completely ignores the suffering and trauma it has inflicted upon your people. In 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the U.S. government firebombed a lawful black community to reiterate the narrative of white supremacy again. Men, women, and children all died in the bombing, riot, and subsequent fires. They were killed with American planes and bombs. They were not insurgents or enemy combatants, as if those terms justify America killing people. There is no justification for what happened to the people of Tulsa, but America is so bold when it comes to its treatment of blacks that it doesn't even search for justification, America simply ignores it as if it didn't happen.
In the modern day, black life is so cheap that this society does not even pause for reflection and consider possible ways to change when black bodies die. Blacks are overrepresented in pretty much every category of death possible. That includes death by the state, capital punishment, officers extinguishing black lives, health-related deaths, death of our babies, and of course death in the streets. Black life is cheap in America. White supremacists still enjoy their pastime of killing black people, and America doesn't really even bat an eye at it when it happens. Use Islam in any way to kill Americans, mainly white Americans, and our government will move heaven and Earth to try to find the next possible terrorist. We'll pass new legislation like the Patriot Act and create new divisions of government, like the Department of Homeland Security, and use every piece of technology we have to root out through digital spy networks the next possible terrorist.
Be a member of the KKK, the oldest terrorist group in the United States, and America will claim you're protected under the First Amendment. Be a white supremacist who talks about openly committing terrorist acts and killing black folks online, and the government and other law enforcement agents will act as if they can't see anything. You can be on Facebook and Twitter or other social media forums posting all day about your hatred for blacks and desire to kill them all, and our society will act as if they never saw it coming, or treat it as if it's not really a big problem. America doesn't care about black people to the point that we still allow the Confederate battle flag to be flown, which is a symbol of slavery, insurrection against the U.S. government and white supremacy. I can go on. A young and relatively sane Kanye West in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina spoke about President George W. Bush and his lack of care for black people. It doesn't matter who is president of the United States, white, black, male, or female, this country and society does not care about black people. And this is exactly why we are allowed to die so often.
The expectation of our society is that we are to die. We are the ones to be jailed; we are the first ones to be thought of as criminals and imprisoned as criminals. The American landscape is so rigged that we're simply fulfilling the prophecy they've shaped for us. America is not interested in changing the landscape or our roles. “The black man has no rights that the white man is bound to respect.” The first definition for us in this society was chattel, property, similar to owning an animal or livestock. When a society expects you to die more and be imprisoned or impoverished more, you are treated as less. That is our historical reality which shapes our place in contemporary society.
The mental, physical, and emotional response to that reality is what inspired my pen to write “Death Toll.” If you examine the words in the poem deep enough you'll feel my pain, my anger, and frustration for how my people are treated and discarded so easily. "These American streets are a morbid expo of lifeless black bodies lying exposed." Many of us have seen footage of Mike Brown's body bleeding out on a street in Ferguson for hours. This is a scene we've witnessed far too many times. Closer to home Kenneth Harding Jr. and Derrick Gains received similar disdain in San Francisco as their lives bled out their bodies while first responders were unwilling or prevented from providing medical assistance.
I am not a gambling man but at all times in America I know I'm gambling with my life. “Never knowing what's gonna happen when you set forth or you step forth from your front porch, maybe that's the reason why I'm contemplating death more.” There is so much at stake everyday being black in America. And as the poem says, "I hate being so necro but negroes and death go hand in hand like young kids back in the day used to thumb wrestle …"
As a result of the death and the brutality that often goes unpunished by the system, there are those that talk of revolution and using violence to overthrow the system. I am not saying that this cannot happen. This country was born out of a violent rebellion against the British. The continental forces were able to be successful enough to cause the British to make a decision about whether or not they wanted to keep fighting. The British chose to give up the fight and focus on building up their global empire. I don't know what a violent rebellion would look like in America today if one were to take place, but what we do know is that the American government has a military industrial complex that is unmatched by any man made force on this planet. If a fight were to take place the fighters would be waging war against the people with the biggest and greatest amount of guns on earth. If people were to take up arms and fight, they would most assuredly be killed. That doesn't mean they couldn't be successful but death would be high. This is beyond the Jewish story of David and Goliath. There are around 40 million black people in a country whose population is close to 320 million. If we compare the population numbers of whites to blacks, then we'll see blacks are almost outnumbered by 210 million people. The talk of violent revolution is moving, it's stirring, but how tangible is it? We are constantly inundated by news of abuses, murders, and police executions, this raises the flames of armed rebellion in the hearts of men and women. Assessing the potential battlefield before us we have to admit they are united and strong, while we are unorganized, and in our disorganized state, we are weak.
There is no full scale military effort for the freedom and liberation of black people, yet, and still, fighting but not with arms and munitions for our survival in this society occurs on a daily basis. This fight in and of itself is revolutionary in nature, and it is that fight that makes us insurgents in our own land. This is what makes me a solider that knows that any day in America could be my last. I walk outside knowing that death is waiting for me somewhere. Mainstream America has provided us with no shelter, so we exist physically and emotionally on the margins of society. And we know all too well that our lives perpetually hang in the balance. Every decision or non-decision can be read as necessitating lethal force. A police officer saying, “show me your ID,” and you began to reach for your wallet in your pocket can merit forty-one shots. Or simply walking in your father's neighborhood and an overzealous/racist neighborhood watch civilian wannabe officer can chase you down, pick a fight, and kill you. And then eventually be found not guilty after being told numerous times by law enforcement not to engage. You can be sleeping in your car and pose no threat in your unconscious state and still be perceived as a threat and have your life taken.
The slight increase in your heart rate when an officer pulls behind you while you're on the road is one of the many signs of this occupation and war. Black people have been killed for centuries in America for no reason at all. We all carry the trauma of senseless death in us. We know that each day could be our last if the right or wrong circumstances arise. Complying does not guarantee survival. It's a crapshoot every time. And we've died enough. There is no tried and true formula for survival. America hates us all in all our glorious diversity. You can be in the finest business suit and hold degrees from the most prestigious American institutions, and they will hate you. The yea
rs of 2008-2016 have clearly demonstrated this lesson with President Obama. You can be from the worst hoods in America and sag your pants all day long with all other forms of stereotypical black deviance present, and they will hate you. It makes no difference. We can talk like corporate America or in street vernacular; we are all still potential victims of white American hate. They kill us in churches, schools, cars, homes, stores, and on corners. They kill us if we're babies, kids, teens or adults, awake or sleep. For blacks, death is everywhere.
I hate to see how some of my people get caught up in trying to demonize those who dress, act, or talk outside of the "white norm." America won't respect us more if we "pull up our pants" or do what Bill Cosby was trying to advocate for and stop acting street. It's semantics. The reality is you are hated simply for being black; Obama is insulted and ridiculed and possibly had attempts made on his life, just like Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Laquan McDonald, Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd, Mike Brown, and so many other names. The outcome is the same. Change clothes, change your diction, change whatever, you cannot change your color, and that is primarily what America hates us for the most. Being black in America regardless of how you dress or sound comes with these oppressive suffocating stereotypes that boil down to fear of black bodies, which makes it easier to kill black bodies. Black means death in America, and this is why we die so much so often.
The poem ends with a warning for America; you can only push a people so far before they begin to fight back. It is foolish of America to think that a response from the people they are brutalizing will not manifest in some form. If and when black people begin to fight back, they will die too. It is sad that this even has to be considered but you cannot keep abusing and killing a group of people and expect them to not respond. In the present and near future there will be more what the white media terms, "riots," rebellions, or uprisings. People have had enough of unjust killings and injustice in the form of cops, lawyers, grand juries, and judges. The writing is on the wall, black people in America are being pushed to their limit, and when they do respond there will be more death. What the death will lead to, I don't know, but what it will cause in the immediate is an increased death toll. What will those bodies die for? Only the victor will have the right to define that.
You (2009)
Where swamp waters flow
Where fat Mosquitos fly
A young daughter grows
Around where gators lay.
It’s black magic, mathematics, lots casted
Cowry shells, chicken blood, putting roots on the slave master.
Where you might see a black man hung up in them branches,
Where we close to, homie? Man, I think we close to Natchez.
It's that dirty dirty
Share cropping, cotton picking, bright and early
lashes on our back and our flesh is burning.
I see her in an old faded picture
her soul plated with scripture
skin light and face tight
because of the mixture
of the slave master who made em suffer
and her Native brother
and the blood that come from the land of her mother
It all runs through her vein.
No more shackles cause freedom came
Grandma Dolly was her name.
The next generation came when the century changed over
my great gram saw the world go to war over Franz Ferdinand.
Color like a rubber band holding us back
that's something my folks in the south understand.
If you black you wasn't viewed as a man.
My great gram was light, couldn't pass
still viewed as second class citizen
passed down through the lineage.
Essie May my Grandma born in Meridian
around the great depression
Jim Crow stole our innocence
left us with bitterness.
Moms keep them sons at home
because out there they’re lynching men.
Grandma was witness to it
because she was living through it
separate but equal schooling
strange fruit
seeing her classmates strung up in them nooses.
It's a nightmare but it's real life
she met up with a man who made her feel like
the sky the limit
but he playing both sides of the fences.
My Grandma pregnant with my mom he ain't trying to listen.
So she started living
for her daughter
tried to make sure that she got
more than everything she was given
in that delta of Mississippi,
my mom was young and pretty,
her pops was never there
he everywhere with other women in the city.
Left her for her moms to raise
she a single black mom now
looking at harder days.
She worked odd jobs trying to put food on my momma's plate.
But it ain't easy for her many times she thought she’d break.
She meet another young man now so she thinking she’s safe,
she didn't know he type to flip out once he get a taste
and that liquor get in his system.
My moms she paid attention
she dreamed of one day raising a young man who would be different.
So everyday in her womb I would sit and listen
to her tell me about my mission, she said, “you!”
It was a cold night in November
the sign of a Scorpio
her younger brother died just a year before from overdose.
My birth brought life back to a family that’s trying to cope
she held me close and filled my ears with hope.
Then she named her boy Tyson,
after the actress Cicely
before I spoke in poetry
my momma already envisioned great things in store for me,
now I'm living out my destiny
doing my best to be
everything that she wanted for me.
She told me to stand strong,
she told me to shine,
she told me to respect women at each and all times,
she told me God buried something great in me deep inside,
and that the world gets to hear it every time I speak a rhyme
she said, “you!”
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Reflections of a Black Boy
“Mississippi Goddam!” - Nina Simone
According to the Equal Justice Initiative's 2015 report Lynching in America "Georgia and Mississippi had the highest number of lynchings between the years 1877-1950."
In Mississippi the largest numbers of lynchings were found in Hinds and Lowndes counties. Most of my Mississippi relatives have lived in and still live in Hinds County today.
__________________________________________________________________________
As I stated in the intro to this book a portion of the title is an homage to Richard Wright who is one of my greatest literary influences. I haven't discussed Wright much in this text but I put this poem in the book because it allowed me to explore another connection I feel I share with Richard Wright and many other black folks in America, and that is the Magnolia State. Mississippi has produced some of the most incredible black folks the world has ever seen. Mississippi is also the only state that has the confederate battle flag in its state flag. As our sister Nina Simone wrote,
"Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam"
Mississippi is arguably the worst state for blacks historically and possibly in the present day as well. Currently Mississippi, is the poorest state, has the highest unemployment, and worst public school system. Mississippi also has the unwanted honor of bein
g the most obese state in the country. Blacks are the ones most impacted by the poverty, unemployment, schools, and food-related health issues.
Mississippi was admitted to the union in 1817 as the twentieth state; by the start of the Civil War, Mississippi was the largest cotton-producing state in America. The United States was the world's largest producer of cotton, thus making Mississippi one of the most important cotton-producing regions in the world. The growth of Mississippi as a state is directly correlated with its dependence on the slavery apparatus. The population and economy of Mississippi developed as it increased its dependency on slavery. Cotton became the primary focus of the plantation economy. To become the champion state in terms of cotton production, Mississippi had to import more and more slaves. By the start of the Civil War, Mississippi had more than half a million slaves within its borders. That was more than half the total population of the state, and one-eighth of the total slave population in the United States. The entire economy of Mississippi was geared towards slavery. It was a system in which very few plantation owners made incredibly large sums of money by brutally exploiting enslaved blacks. Poor whites didn't fair too well in the slave economy either, but their status at least on the outside appeared to be better than that of slaves. Mississippi proudly had the greatest concentration of wealthy people in America prior to the Civil War. The biggest money in America was to be found around the Mississippi Delta. With their power through wealth and property, the rich planter elite held the state hostage and created policies and social/cultural mores that allowed them to maintain power and control, while at the same time maintain an oppressive system of institutional degradation of black lives.
