May 17, 2019

Poet's Nook: "white privilege" by Kyla Jenée Lacey





We learned your French, we learned your English, we learned your Spanish, we learned your Dutch, your Portuguese, your German,
you learned our "nothing", you called us stupid...that's white privilege and I'm sure


it probably hurts for you to hear those two words, kind of like gun shots and explosions from those commissioned
to protect you whisking past your ears.
What is white privilege? It is the only 5 decades of legal acknowledgment expected to correct 400
years of white transgression It is crack versus cocaine, blacks receiving almost 20 percent
longer sentences for the same exact offenses.
Or like, for instance, a black man without a record is less like to get a job than a
white felon, well maybe it's cause we are lazy and we don't work hard enough, uhhhhhhh
like WTF, FOUR hundred years in the same field, literally, is an incredible resume builder.
it is Katrina answering the government's prayers of eugenics, Dick Cheney going fishing the
next day, Condoleeza on a shopping spree Bush, in San Diego, but Kanye is the one
you call crazy, cause like it only took the U.S.A. 2 days to get aid to Asia, but five for FEMA
to get to canal street and esplanade.
It is the one black kid who beat the shit out of the odds, but only thanks to Sandra
Bullock, Michelle Pfeiffer and the white shadow, so now we all can make it, it is the only
time thousands of white people are cheering for the black kid to win is in a stadium,
it is you looking at me crazy if I told you to go back to Europe even though we didn't
have a say, it is you all of a sudden
having a problem with immigration, like this isn't even your nation!!!!!
How the hell you discover some shit that wasn't even missing to begin with, you've Columbused
our traditions, had white girls twerking in high definition, with multi colored hair and
purple nails, but it was ghetto when we did it.
Oh I make you uncomfortable try a cramped slave ship oh wait slavery is over now, it's
just called the prison system cause like you're not racist cause you don't use the n word
but y'all use niggas everyday what is white privilege, it is the acceptance of bombs over
Baghdad but not over Boston, it's European history being taught as a major and African
as an elective, it is learning about my people only 28 days, like I'm not black every
fucking second, It is every white boy who wanted to fuck my brains out, not because I'm pretty,
but because I'm pretty for a black girl, it is people thinking that Africa is
one nation, it is the waving of confederate flag like you didn't lose the battle, and
then telling us to get over slavery, it is people saying that black people destroyed neighborhoods
but forgetting that white people have destroyed continents.
it is every time I bring up my plight some white man has to tell me that I'm crazy, but
is kind enough to praise my English, or say that we are all given the same opportunities
even though he has a family history of wealth and I don't even know my family history at all
It is the justification of police brutality like what did that person do?
I'm sure it doesn't hurt as much when the victim doesn't look like you.
it is people thinking that affirmative action is an unfair advantage instead of keeping
the qualified from being unfairly disadvantaged or throwing out a qualified applicant because
their name sounded to African American.
It is newports imported into black communities but black boys exported for weed.
It is big plastic asses, that are called fat when we naturally have them, it is an Australian
woman who's the new classic of rap music,
it is everyone who hears this that dismisses this poem I just spit as reverse racism, that is white privilege. 

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