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The Cure The Basically Brooklyn Series
I am white therefore I am a racist. My family history goes back further than I can trace, but for as far back as I can go no one in my family owned slaves. My family came from Eastern Europe fleeing a continent ravaged by a disease called war. Not all my family fled. My great grandparents remained in a small patch of Poland over run by those schooled in satanic scripture, cattle-prodding people into railway cars and shipping them off to ovens where human ash fell over the land like flakes of snow passing for an early winter.
I am white; therefore, I hate blacks. I was born in a jungle of steel and glass in a borough known as Brooklyn when the civil rights movement and integration were matches designed to ignite the pages of satanic scripture and the movement spawned great leaders with names like Bobby, Martin and John, also torn from life like my great grandparents by those infected with the disease of hate, veins boiling like rivers ravaged by flood.
I am white and was raised in a mixed neighborhood sharing classrooms and elevators with blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Muslims, members of an inferior race, many of whom graduated the Halls of Erasmus with grades far better than mine; GPA's reaching out like an invisible hand against the face of the master race not because of the color of their skin, but because of the work they put in; high from the vapors of the American Dream poisoning them with the illusion of one nation under God with liberty and justice for all.
I am white and pity the white woman who spat upon me in the streets of midtown Manhattan because I kissed the black girl from Harlem where many of her neighbors looked upon me with fire in their eyes on the evenings we sat on the stoop of her four-story walk up, listening to tunes from artists who were part of a race of musicians with songs we loved and words we cherished and grooves that moved the feet to the very heartbeat of what it is to be human; a simple joy of life.
I am white and walk uncomfortably through black neighborhoods because black faces once robbed me of my bicycle, my watch and twice my baseball glove returning the second one because I am a southpaw and all of those surrounding me were righties. "Ah man, he’s a lefty. Ain't nobody here left-handed. Give the cracker back his glove." The cracker watched not the faces of black kids walking down the street, but the face of poverty driving kids whose parents chose food over leather when minimum wage dances dangerously close to the insanity of trying to make ends meet. Michael Jordon dangling 50 cent sneakers for the bargain price of 100 bucks.
I am white and look upon my children of mixed race feeling the fear I felt on the morning of September 11th when the color drained from every face and we were one race staring blank faced and afraid as the towers came tumbling down and a cloud of dust, cast the darkness of those same satanic scripture's screaming in the face of the Book begging us to Love They Neighbor. There is still no asterisk listing exceptions to the rule.
I am white and we are masters of nothing. This land is not ours, but the land of the red ones whom we butchered and slaughtered in our efforts to bring forth our inferiority, rather than superiority over those whom this land belonged to, those who respected the garden God gave us living within their means, a part of the natural order of things, rather than apart from it.
I am white and will not apologize for the actions of those who purchased slaves from the slave traders of a dark continent because I know no slaves. There is no one I can apologize to because those moments are moments past and this is the moment that matters and in this moment, I will not make excuses for the place I am in for I am ultimately responsible for the choices I've made and the social standing which has me station to station; or paycheck to paycheck. I am not the face of Johnny Reb flag wavers, neo-Nazis or white supremacy’s pissing down the back of Jesus because they are so blinded by hate they cannot see the inferiority they represent with excuses for the failures they embrace.
They are diseased and they are bent on spreading their virus. The virus will not discriminate. It cares not for the color of your skin, but it doesn't have to infect you.
Though it does anger me, embarrass me; it will not affect me. I have a cure. I keep it close to my heart. I call it love.
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