It's almost 3 a.m. right now and I am stuck in a river of thoughts and emotions hard to explain. Being a Black Man in My America is like having tofu in gumbo.
Cant really make heads or tails of it. Right now, I am trying my hardest to be politically correct with how I articulate what I really want to say. This week was dizzy-ing with a swath of hateration that came from people who appear to share the same hues as myself. I am still stuck in this conditioning of social uplift and taking care of our own. However, "my own" takes stabs at me fairly often. Maybe they need to see if I bleed the same. It is possible that they don't believe I am human. Maybe they don't care. What's crazy is...their perception of who I am is so far from my reality and I assumed (you know what they say about those who ass...u...me...?) they understood from my works what I stood for.... Why do I care so much about what people think--especially those who don't mean me well? Why do I care about what "those" people think when they do not exist in my atmosphere? They are not present when I need them. They are merely audience members at the ticket entrances while my life appears to be under someone's stage light. The mask is real. Being a Black Man In My America means you consume dysfunction as a part of your diet. You are conditioned to be tough and rough and stoic. Regularly, we are exposed to millions of images of us being shot, murdered, brutalized, sodomized, humiliated, and depicted as boogeymen to society. We have been mentally, physically, and spiritually castrated for so long that you wonder why some of us exist in alter egos, as schizophrenics, or just straight up ignant! It's hard to wake up to this being my constant reality. To some whom I walk by or am in the company of...they perceive me to be an entity that needs to be destroyed, exiled, or eliminated with the cast of my brothers. To a few others, I am expected to have a good paying job, invest in the latest wears, technology, and cars instead of my future, keep the six pack, lay the pipe well, and keep the mask real tight. There are a small number who I can count on my hand that allow me to just be me--in the skin I am in. In this moment, my heart is full. I live in a space where I am loved and see as "magic". In the eyes of my three and four foot Scholars, Mr. Martin can do anything and his hugs feel so good. I am funny. I am cool. I am HUMAN. Man, I am blessed to live in this space. I am someone who means something dear to someone else who has a heartbeat. But in my head...I can't shake the haters. I can't shake the images of us being shackled and imprisoned physically, emotionally, and/or socially from the wrecks of 400+ years of oppression, genocide, and disenfranchisement. Being me...A Black Man In My America means...?
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October 2021
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