Perspective...

 

Source - Science: evidence is intelligence, Facebook

January 28, 2024, the Griot Poet

This spell is a poetic composite of trolls online I have encountered and how I handled them.

After posting several pictures of my hero, Dr. Ronald E.McNair, and others for February,

I received this short missive from someone in their mommy’s basement:

 

“Since we have Black History Month, why don’t we have White History Month? Why do we have Women’s History Month, LGBT History Month, Asian-Pacific Islander History Month, and Hispanic Heritage Month? Isn’t that reverse racism? Isn't that heterosexual discrimination? Don’t ‘all lives matter?’”

 

I often encounter trolls who think that they are being clever in posting things like this,

Their mentality involves “narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy and sadism.”

Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-online-secrets/201409/internet-trolls-are-narcissists-psychopaths-and-sadists

 

My wife always asks, “Why do you BOTHER answering them?”

My answer is always the same: “Because they asked!”

 

“We already have one,” I started my preamble.

February 1 to February 28,

February 29 on leap year occasions,

 

I start my retort,

Like a lawyer in court,

With “what if” scenario questions:

 

What if Thomas Jefferson,

Who wrote the poetic “All men are created equal.”

Wasn’t also pedophile-raping a fourteen-year-old baby named Sally Hemming?

Whose mother was also the product of rape by Martha Jefferson’s father?

George Washington had dentures made out of the teeth of enslaved servants.

DL Hugely pointed out on Instagram that humans are complex,

You can “write dope shit” and still be a psychopath.

 

What if the freed, formerly enslaved Africans were immediately paid reparations?

What if they got government subsidies for real estate and property expansion, just like the government did white western settlers?

What if they were taught a quality education for participation in the body politic?

What if Black Wall Street In Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Rosewood in Florida hadn’t been razed out of existence?

What if the fusion government in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898 had been allowed to exist?

What if the Ku Klux Klan hadn’t killed or thrown out the elected officials, razed the black newspaper, and threatened its editor with lynching?

What if Central Park was still the black township of Seneca Village?

 

Would there have been an Emmett Till?

Would there have been a need for a Montgomery Bus Boycott?

Would there have been the need to “Sit In” at the F.W. Woolworth counter?

Would there have been a March on Washington on the same date that Emmitt was lynched?

Would Trayvon Benjamin Martin have become his modern equivalent?

Or Jordan Davis, Reneisha McBride, Sandra Bland, Breona Taylor, Michael Brown, or too many, I'm too exhausted to name?

Dr. King wouldn’t have left Dexter Avenue Baptist Church’s pulpit,

And might have lived to a ripe old age without much incident.

 

What if the descendants of the white men who lynched Emmett Till, a child, stopped taking potshots at his grave marker?

What if the practice of Black History Month is corporate whitewashing of what Dr. Carter G. Woodson originally intended?

Dr. Woodson gave oppressed people the tools to fight against gaslighting.

Just like they jumped on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion bandwagon after lynching George Floyd on livestream.

 

What if Malcolm Little’s dad hadn’t been lynched?

What if his mom hadn’t been committed to an insane asylum?

What if he and his siblings hadn’t been split up in foster care?

You wouldn’t have created a Malcolm X.

 

What if, indeed?

Because if all these hypotheticals had happened,

We wouldn’t be having this conversation!

 

You’re so vexed about not having a month specifically named for your culture,

You missed the point that our hidden history is a reliving of shared trauma.

Just like Asian-Pacific Islanders Month has to discuss the Chinese Exclusion Act, the fact that the U.S. interred George Takei and his family (Mr. Sulu of Star Trek), and the U.S. TOOK the Kingdom of Hawaii as a naval coaling station!

Just like Women’s History Month is about struggles with patriarchy.

Just like LGBT History Month must discuss the assassination of Harvey Milk, the murder of Matthew Wayne Shepard, and the police attack on Stonewall.

Just like Hispanic Heritage Month has to discuss Cesar Chavez, the plight of Hispanic agricultural workers, and the fact that “remember the Alamo” is superfluous,

Since you conveniently forget that the whole conflict was that Mexico wouldn’t extradite escaped Africans back to the United States!

 

Cubans who escaped Castro were allowed to touch Florida’s shores,

Haitians, whose ancestors repelled French colonialists, are turned back with a shoulder shrug.

 

As a matter of fact,

HAITI had to pay FRANCE for 122 years: reparations.

20 to 30 billion in today's dollars.

The cost of colonizers losing free enslaved labor,

Started in 1825 directly to the Gauls, having the gall to ask for it,

Transferred in 1922 to the National City Bank of New York, now Citibank.

This HEIST is the cause of Haiti’s poverty, NOT indigenous religious practices!

 

So my perspective,

To your objections,

Is like Jack Nicholson said in “A Few Good Men,”

“You can’t handle the truth,” or this smoke!

 

Interestingly,

My online troll choked,

And I did not read a single word of rebuttal from them going forward.