Spoken word by the spiritual poet

Honestly, I have been struggling with President Donald J. Trump’s reference to our people group as “Sons of dogs” several weeks ago. They say, sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me. Well, the name calling hurt me deeply and prompted my thoughts written below.

“The hereditary dividing walls of hate and hostility must come down”

First and foremost, the hereditary dividing walls of hate and hostility must come down. For it has been far too long that we have borne the proverbial transgression of sin and shame of the nation. We were bought by and brought by brute force against our free will to the free shores of the free world under the deleterious duress of slavery. We as a people group in the “White House” of slavery could not lay claim to plantation lands, promises planned and posterity penned by the paternal fathers of independence. We as a people group in the “White House” of slavery could not lay claim to personhood, peoplehood and nationhood. We as a people group in the “White House” of slavery could not lay claim to husband or wife, sons and daughters or grandsons and granddaughters. We as a people group in the “White House” of slavery could not lay claim to organization, education and assimilation for their fear of collusion, corruption and insurrection. And we as a people group in the “White House” of slavery could not lay claim to our ancestral names, ancestral heritage and ancestral history. For our names, heritage and history were beaten from our mouth, beaten from our mind and beaten far beyond the margins of our memories, seemingly severing our entire life, lineage and legacy to produce a people without a past, without a present and without a future–a people group without hope.

First and foremost, the hereditary dividing walls of hate and hostility must come down. For it has been far too long that we have trodden American apartheid’s road to freedom, equality, human rights and civil rights. Regrettably, the stony road we trod for the past 400 years in the wilderness of America’s Promise Land has not proven in our favor and we are still under the power and pressure of the oppressor. For we have seen our clothes wear out, our feet throb and swell and the numerous and numberless bodies, bones and blood of kin and clan swallowed whole by the bottomless grave of Sheol. We have seen the promiscuous pernicious pagan masters’ pleasure themselves with our wives, with our sisters and with our daughters all in the name of perverse proprietary property. We have seen strange fruit hanging from southern poplar trees swinging with bright bulging eyes, twisted mouths and silhouettes of black bodies ablaze against the star light sky in the black of night. We have seen the wanton rampage of racists’ bombing and burning of churches and entire black communities akin to “Rosewood” at the alleged proverbial words of one white witness or the white damsel in distress from being sexually soiled by the sons of Satan. We have seen the Nat Turner’s, John Brown’s, Huey Newton’s, Malcom X’s, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s and their death regardless of peaceful or retaliatory protest employed. We have seen the isolation, specialization, centralization, ghettoization and hpyersegregation of our people group up through the 1980s. We have seen the declaration of war on drugs by President Reagan in 1982 in the urban ghetto across America. We have seen the inexplicable infinite influx and inundation of drugs rain down on the heels of Reagan’s declaration of war on drugs when drugs were on the decline. We have seen the financial blockbuster bolstering and bulging of federal antidrug budgets increase between 1980 and 1984 to astronomical levels and the funding of incarceration exceeding the funding of education. We have seen the deadly addiction to crack cocaine and opioids beaten away, shot away, arrested away, and sentenced away for life in the urban gated ghettos from the 1980s to recent years. We have seen the selective picking, profiling, patrolling and disproportionate mass incarceration of black people and people of color from the 1980s to recent years. We have seen the relentless satirization, vilification, demonization and criminalization of our people group for decades. And now we have seen Donald J. Trump, the President of the United States, the most powerful nation on earth, refer to our people group on the universal stage of the White House as “Sons of dogs” without repercussion, ramification and retaliation from the political pundits, political pontiffs and political party lines across the aisles.

First and foremost, the hereditary dividing walls of hate and hostility must come down. For we are determined and prepared as a people group to redress, reconcile and regroup with you to revive our relationship which died from the proverbial transgression of sin and shame of the nation for the sake of our nation. We are determined as humankind to live above the walls of hate. We are determined as humankind to live above the walls of hostility. We are determined as humankind to live above the walls of bigotry. And we are determined as humankind to live above the walls of classism and racism. Therefore, as a coexisting coalition of colors coalesced by divine destiny, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all, we unapologetically say, the hereditary dividing walls of hate and hostility must come down.