This appears in a pre-2010 issue
of Down in the Dirt magazine.
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Black History
Tanisha Alexander
AKA
Phenomenally
Tulsa Public Schools Ain’t never taught me shhhh
About it
Yea I know about Malcolm X
And Martin Luther
What about Sojourner the Truth
And Fredrick Douglas
See those two names where hard for me to pull
Because your history classes were too full
And the teacher was to busy
To busy teaching European and Western civilization
To teach my little chocolate ass
About Kenya
Nigeria
Tanzania
Or hell where my name came from
Tunisia
Public school system
you’re robbing me
Of my history
My ancestry
I don’t know how I came to be
Where I came from
Because it’s sure not Tulsa, Oklahoma
Or Wichita, Kansas
It’s sad to know that I don’t know who my
Great Great Grandmother
Or Grandfather Be
It’s really horrible that I speak Ebonically
Unconsciously
See I don’t know who comes before Hugh Maxwell
and Nelly
Because the census of 1920
Didn’t care to much for me
Check W for white
N for Negro
No names and birth dates
Just how many are in you’re household
They didn’t care if they misspelled our names
On the United States roll call
Because after all
Who the hell cares
Where we came from
See truly it’s about the powers that be
Because they truly have a lot of power over you
And me
If your skin any shade of brown, black or blue
Taking my history away
Leaving me to believe that my only history
Is that we were once slaves
But fuck that because
My ancestry started way before that
But how can I ever trace it
You made sure I could never find out
About my true roots
I refuse to believe that my ancestry started from a slave
They are a part of my history
Yes indeedy
But baby I want to know
Who gave birth to them
And them
And them
And them
And
What did they do all day?
Because Believe me
Kunta is not the sum of my history
But media
Society
And public schooling
Want me to believe in that American dream
And forget that we were the ancestors
Of kings
And queens.
It’s the greatest tool of deceiving
And
It’s a powerful way to demean the Black Community.