20151105 (white privilege)

You’re not called to action if 

You’re really naive if you’re 

Still a child who hasn’t wondered

Yet why most black people live

In falling down neighborhoods

With bad schools you haven’t 

Yet asked the irritating why 

Adults always complain about 

Could be you find video games

More involving you haven’t

Come to grips with why the

Guys you’re shooting at are 

Always foreigners well it’s

Kind of to be expected we 

Wouldn’t make war on 

Ourselves guessing no combat 

Adventures based on our civil

War which is another oxymoron

I’d rather doubt any cowboys

Indians too the Brits might have

Some of them fighting the fuzzy

Wuzzies colonial escapades

Probably not Belgians enslaving 

Congolese every year the

Probabilities of questions increase

And if you’re in school chances

Are the subjects will receive

Passing treatment after we shared 

Thanksgiving with the natives 

We got off on the wrong foot

Shot them they arrowed us 

We signed a treaty but fiddled with 

Their women they took our scalps 

We took their land kind of

Been like that ever since not

To worry they have little land 

Left mostly the pits they get 

Drunk kill themselves off soon 

Will be gone we honor their

Memory naming football baseball

Teams after their brave forebears

Blacks came from the south 

To take our jobs after Lincoln 

Freed them they used to work on

Plantations helped make big fortunes 

Growing cotton so they tried

Farming but things didn’t work

Out they came to the south from

Africa none of them wanted to 

Come but in those days you 

Could buy them they’d literally

Work themselves to death they

Sang danced played ran too 

Which is why they dominate 

Sports earning fabulous salaries 

Selling clothes drugs rap 

If these answers seemed too 

Facile and you read W. E. B. 

Du Bois Frederick Douglas 

Harriet Tubman Malcom X 

Martin Luther King James Baldwin

And now Ta Nehisi Coates

Well your days of innocence

Are gone forever if you just sit

Comfortably on your big white

Privilege you’re worse than the

Ignorant rednecks who have

Never thought to ask why

Could be you’re uneasy rooting 

For the tribe it’s an innocent

Custom no need to change 

The name you weren’t around 

For the black exploitation

But if you know history you

Can see how you came by

Those measurable advantages

You’re guilty now because you 

Keep cashing the checks

c. J.S.Manista, 2015