#niggersmatter

#niggersmatter
Another one gone...

...& another one gone.

Where were you?
Still celebrating your Independence,
still picking beer pickled bbq out
of your teeth?

Did you look up from your reverie
long enough to toss a hashtag
into a virtual wind between peeks
of omg pics & lol kittens?

Or maybe you sdmh'd in disgust,
not for the dead, but because here comes another
news cycle spent dodging the issue,
or having to whitesplain how all
lives matter, until you get home
& listen to the Fox whisper,
demonize the lives of niggers
who really don't mean shit
to you.

Do something,
right now: go to a mirror,
look into your eyes,
try to see the faces
of those who died—Do you remember
any? Do you remember
a name? Perhaps
you can think of your one black friend, then—
& tell yourself: niggers matter,
niggers matter,
even niggers matter.

Even niggers who be stealin', lootin',
hookin', shootin',

all that!

Even niggers matter.

What you call crime,
is simply survival.

You want to blame
us for our predicament,
because you refuse to look in mirror—
admit it, you haven't done it yet—
& accept that you have stood idly
while we struggled,
idly while we try to overcome
poverty,
substandard education,
locked up fathers,
drug addict mothers,
& the only chance we see
to rise are devils
disguised as saviors,
& the only scholarships
we're offered is to the University of State Pen.

But none of that matters.

None of it matters,
because you have yet to admit
niggers matter.

If you really thought
we mattered,
we would think
we matter.

Pull yourself away
from that mirror,
& if you now truly believe
ALL lives matter,
join us.
Help us
commemorate our martyrs
& demand for us the dignity
you claim 

all lives deserve.

Or not.

But be'ware,
there's only so much injustice
we will take before forced
to put flames to our tongues
& breathe a fire
hot enough
to ignite the sky.

Hey Dude, Kiss Me!

I might be kissing a man today. This is nothing new. I’m an affectionate guy who’s been known to smooch the occasional lucky fella. But tomorrow’s kiss would be, by far, the most important hombre á hombre smackdown of my life. You see, tomorrow’s Same Sex Kiss at Chik-fil-A Day, a protest of the company’s head’s words and deeds with regards to same sex marriage. ChiK-fil-A boss Sam Cathy speaks out against the trend of accepting the civil marriage rights of all people. He spends his customer’s money, or at least a sizable portion, on efforts to stop Our progress towards a society that treats all our citizens equally.

My kiss would come on the heels of a counter-protest on August 1, where many of our less enlightened American friends and families defended Cathy’s right, as an American himself, to say and spend as much as he wants to defend traditional marriage. Most were bigots, afraid that gay culture will pervade, worse—pervert, what it means to be American. “God hates fags!”

Some who claim to support progress got in the long line to fill Chik-fil-A’s tills, plenty of it which will undoubtedly be dumped into Cathy’s moot war. “I support gay rights, but I LOVE chicken!”

There are a few who have taken the opportunity to poopoo marriage all together, saying that it’s something the government shouldn’t be involved it at all, ignoring things like the tax benefits of marriage, or the ability to put a spouse on one’s insurance, etc. “Marriage is a dumb institution anyway.”

Then there are those who’ll dismiss my kiss as just a stupid prank that doesn’t even call to light all the other organizations that donate to anti-gay marriage causes, many of them retail operations, like Chik-fil-A, who nobody’s paying attention to, much less boycotting. “You’re wasting your time!”


 The thing is, I don’t want to live in a nation where our morals are dictated to us by a narrow interpretation of someone else’s religious views. Giving special creedance to one group's religious morals over another’s is downright disrespectful, not to mention unconstitutional. I’m not going to discuss what some mayors are opting to do by blocking Chik-fil-A from  their cities and towns. That does raise issues of censorship, but has nothing to do with my kiss.

I don’t expect the naysayers to approve of my possible man-to-man kiss, later today, whether I raise their homophobic hackles, their chicken-loving hackles, their anti-all-marriage hackles, or their there-are-more-important-things-to-do hackles. The great thing is that this is America. I don’t need anyone to approve of my actions. The only person I have to justify my kiss to is myself, and I do that just fine. You see, I am a culture warrior, and we are at war.

It may be a pointless war, but it is a war nonetheless. I say pointless because progress is inevitable. Society evolves. However hard people may try to stop things like ending slavery, interracial marriage, or gay marriage, the best they can do is slow it down. As far as gay marriage is concerned, every new generation is less inclined to see a problem with it. Those who do are simply adhering to old beliefs and calling it “tradition” so they can wrap their hate in a pretty little package.

Even if I did nothing, all those backward thinking people would eventually die off, and the pushback from the religious right would barely exist. The question is, can I just sit on my ass and wait for all these bigots to die. I can’t. Why? Because I have too many friends who are in same sex relationships that they want to, but can’t, take to the next level. Some even have kids. Laying back quietly and biding my time does nothing to help them achieve their goals. What kind of friend would it make me to ignore the blatant inequality they have to live with?
 
So yes, I’m a culture warrior, and today is just the latest battle in what may prove to be a long, hard war. The law legalizing civil marriage for all in Maryland has been challenged, and enough bigoted theocrats signed petitions to place the law in referendum limbo. So far, no such law has held up to referendum. Any law ratifying the civil rights of citizens should  never be put to referendum. Can you imagine if interracial marriage laws had been put to the people? Thank goodness for the Supreme Court’s wise decision in Loving V. Virginia. Hopefully, this case will make it to SCOTUS, soon enough; and they will rule properly, as they did back then.

Until that day comes, however, the fight is up to us. Until then, I will continue to fight for what is right. I will continue to fight for freedom for all. I will continue to fight for everyone’s right, including yours, to fall in love with another consenting adult, regardless of sex, and try to find  your happily ever after. Not doing so would be, to me, Un-American. I want you to approve. I want you to at least get it. But it’s not necessary, as long as I’m okay with it. I am.

Now, any of you guys wanna kiss me?

Jim Crow 2.0

Affirmative action has been part of our social and political landscape for over fifty years now, ever since JFK signed an executive order in 1961 that called for  "affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin." Four years later, President Johnson took it even further when he stated:

Nothing is more freighted with meaning for our own destiny than the revolution of the Negro American…In far too many ways American Negroes have been another nation: deprived of freedom, crippled by hatred, the doors of opportunity closed to hope…But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair…This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result…To this end equal opportunity is essential, but not enough, not enough.

So here we are, trudging through another presidential election cycle, and as always, Republicans have begun to talk about the inequality of affirmative action. They call it “preferential treatment.” They inspire students to sue colleges over it. They claim that it’s no longer necessary in an America willing to elect a black president. They say that the United States can never be a country based on equality as long as we continue to offer a leg up to a part of our population.They’re right!
Read the rest of the story on The Urban Twist.