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Hypocrite

"So why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street?
When gang banging make me kill a nigga blacker than me?
Hypocrite!"

– Kendrick Lamar- The Blacker the Berry

Listening and re-listening, debating, and listening again, has had me in a frenzy trying to understand where I stand in all the rage. Are we valuing every narrative? How can we call our own ignorant when they are simply telling their stories? How does our debate distract us from the real work of saving our own lives? To begin unpacking, I began to shuffle a flurry of ideas, debasing single stories and recognizing the value of a more complex narrative, that has evolved into three muddled poems because BLACKLIVESMATTER.

Part One: Envy

The worst of the deadly sins. 
It's the fear of worthlessness
Commitment to deficiency
An unresolvable yearning
Urgently declaring
I am not enough...

BLACKLIVESMATTER
Mine too?
My awkward goofy?
My loud disruptive?
My nappy jovial?
My sexy deviance?
My light skin?
My dark skin?
My new trend?
My sin?
My forgiveness?

I want your Blackness.
Yours is more real than mine!
More supported,
Legitimized,
Especially more divine.

There’s a new season of Blackness,
Unapologetic intelligence.

Are they freer than me?
Am I
Are any, we
Really free?
From what?
What does freedom from, tie us to?

Is it okay to be me?
Or should I continue playing into their narrative?
Chose a single story: Jemima, Mamie or Jezebel.
When will I, again,
Remember I can,
Write my own?

Part Two: Stay in your Space

The other day my brother said to me.
“He is unapologetically white.”
I saw him there
In the middle of “the hood”
Taking up all the space he needed
For his Whiteness.

A declaration for all to respect,
Or at least accept,
Him.
He walked. He stood.
Unchallenged.

I look elsewhere and saw the same Black man over,
And over again.
I couldn’t decide if
He was squeezing into the
This is a Black Man Box
Or I was enclosing him into it.  

Part Three: Hypocrite

Is it hypocrisy or complexity?
Are we frustrated that our multidimensionality
Suddenly,
Is not definable? Confinable?

Oh wow!
Am I more then what the “White Man” told me?
Casted me as, and
Directed me to be?

He is ignorant.
Wait.
If he’s wrong, than I am wrong,
And we are stuck,
And we are lost,
Again.
Waiting to be rescued and respected.
Our lives determined.

They call me hypocrite.
I’ll own it
So we can discuss it
Because the real question is,
What do we do next?   

Maybe it’s not hypocrisy,
But internalized racism.
Why do we silence one another?
Why develop this fake rivalry?
Who is it that wants us to believe,

That we don’t all agree
BLACKLIVESMATTER

Nicole Jordan, Diversity Advocate





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