i was raised all over the place, uprooted &+ destabilized by two young parents both recent HS graduates, living with their parents, &+ on two different trains of thought. my mother, a lightskin 19yr old at the time, attaining to be a grammar school teacher, resided in the Miller St home of my great-great Aunt, who was strict in her Alabama Southern Baptist ways. paired with my 20yr old darkskin father, who was of Islamic faith, living between the streets &+ the home of my humble Methodist grandmother. and that's just the basis of my conception, i've been raised, or "brought-up", by many peoples that walks adifference. i fail to give you ethnic titles for my parents because they are both mixed, it would be a ridiculous percentage count. i stick to the majorities: dominican, west indian, italian, and black.
the question of my sexuality does not exist, (adhere to old posts where i address those concerns). i have lived all over, dubbing myself "suburban raised-inner city schooled." because i move around so much a friend of mines deemed me "the roamer". reveling myself to Christ at times, living in all walks of life.
how then, complicated in detail, simplistically written, can i be boxed in to what this Americanized idea, and ideal, is of "Black". i guess the most basic manner to explain this is to understand that being Black In America means to ultimately be unequal, lesser in humanization, or any other darkened term to suggest still to the institutionalized separation of thought.
even more perplexing is how do i escape this footprint tagging of negativity &+ downplay of existence. i understand why youths alike myself in age come down to the basic mentality of "this is how they see me (anyhow) so why not get the most out of it, live it out to the fullest." with mainstream America, both in media &+ in the masses, looking on (or down) on all Black and Latino persons to never be accepted anywhere, &+ not to mention the genocide being permitted by not only the external forces (ie: police, politics, and prison), but by the staggering amount of Black-on-Black tragedy, "the limit is the sky" becomes the gates of our livelihood.
i find myself trapped, caged in. relying on the sanity|self-awareness i find in poetry, art, music, and education to not lost myself &+ blur into wasted potential. but rightly so, i would be a liar if i was to say i wasn't worried about my peers. i see the madness, the lies presented as the truth that's fed to them, and i sit beside them and watch as feast-like they sit there &+ eat it all up. i'm wondering if there's a way for me to change the content, or at least change the choice of content.
the more i read the likes of Cornel West, Maya Angelou, Michael Eric Dyson (the populous of the shelf) and listen to Talib Kweli, Immortal Technique, Binary Star; the more i find "real" &+ knowing what's considered "real". if i was to spit those names out to any my age, 98% would not know who i was referring to, replacing with the likes of SouljaBoi, 50 Cent, and other autotuned photoshop corporate owned dummies.
"self-esteem yo we forgot the dream
on our Jefferson's y'all but we forgot the theme"
-Common, Be
what i write is what many think, at least at one point, but it is in that prime freshness that we have to grab hold of the mental &+ change this cycle of degradance. can't be done overnight &+ won't be down over(air)waves - America benefits too much off of "Black", "ghetto" stereotypes the revolution has to be internal, has to rise from the community. when you settle for less, you get less than what you settled for. we're not settled, but we're settling; take the anger out on the opponent. not the proponent who's trying to do the same as you.
am i suffering from an identity crisis? nah, i know me. i'm just suffering from the afflictions inflicted upon me by America &+ being left out there in the cold. i find a home within myself, i maintain myself, self is safety. because the streets are unforgiving and the suburbs are unforgetting.
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