// The heart of the matter//

I think what is bothering most about the hell yeah they don’t like an educated black man part of the Obama response is the age old chesnut that beats around the black community

Respectability.

It says something to me about myself deeply that I am somewhat unmoved by the tears of ” I am never going to be American”

I mean make no mistake ,it’s heart breaking because I never want to see a brother or sister hurt by the hegemony

But As someone who got it pretty flipping early that being an “american” was NEVER gonna be an unquestioned state

I want to know what gave folks the right to believe they would be?

It can’t be historical , because so much of integration HISTORY was brutally based around the experience of violence, verbal,economic and physical around the challenging of any status quo for black Americans.

We saw eyes on the prize. They didn’t respond to integration with flowers.

Pre Presidency what I read about Obama from certain sections was not about what he was

but what he was not

He wasn’t hood or ratchet or ghetto or gully

Mind you those folks can make our fashion clothes and music but we’re kind of ok with them being oppressed if it fucks up our comfort during cocktail hour and in the board room

to the point we would focus more on their shortcomings than the system that forcefully links us to them and works to oppress us together

So i wanna know what made them think they would be?

I want to know why no ones snappy comebacks and deep searching thoughts come out for Briana Flores, Oscar Grant,Sakia Gunn and the like?

Why is that and those and them something we mourn and eulogize

but doesn’t inspire the skin tearing god fucking damn it I HAVE EARNED THE RIGHT we’ll aim at the man with a bad toupee?

they aren’t respectable enough.

Closing schools, denying housing and making target practice of toddlers isn’t respectable enough?

Emotionally , I know what I feel every time I see Barack Obama , as Presidentof what is possible

but in that same emotion is the feeling of

You knwo what let’s be real

most White Boys and girls won’t be president

so I can’t feel that enraptured to the office

so why aren’t we as wrapped up in the possible

as scared

as moved  to tears

as destroyed

by what they

do to prevent them form going to Harvard

or even BMCC

and I worry that I’m losing my empathy

but when we continue to be more excited that white people agree with us

than the fact that we can speak for our selves

I’m not so sure it’s a bad thing to lose