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It’s funny that you want me to be okay and that you have so much to say about a past that’s based on secrecy and muted lies.
It’s funny to me that you don’t see the irony in the community dialogues that tell me in a nice way what massa told my great-great grandpa…If you want to stay alive raise your hands high…but the truth is, it really don’t matter.
How is it that I, an educator, must sit and teach my students to pay homage to a pledge that was created with good intentions but was modified in the midst of a people that intended to keep them bound? Would it not be a great if I could believe the words applied to me?
Would it not be great if I could drive my car, walk down my street, see an officer of another color and not get that gut wrenching twisted knot in my stomach?
If I slip up and speed, am I gonna die today?
If my appearance misleads, will they make my momma cry today?
Oh, Hi, today. I was afraid we wouldn’t meet.
No longer the strange fruit swaying in the breeze, I was afraid I’d join my brothers and sisters whose blood now litter the streets.
It’s easy for you to say it’s time to get over it, and perhaps there’s a snippet of truth to those words.
I won’t pretend that some don’t use it as an excuse to remain useless…
But I don’t believe that if you were told that your hair is not acceptable or that your skin was alarming…
If you were beaten with the idea that your body is good for nothing but sex. Not worthy of love making or being loved…
If you were constantly made to raise a nation of dying boys by yourself because the systemic desensitization of your men has caused them to become detached from the idea of family…
And, now, it’s not that he’s raping the proverbial “baby momma” and leaving a shamed seed to find the soil in which to grow. Oh no. Now she’s offering up her body as though she’s nothing left to offer.
Take that and apply it to you…is it really that easy to get over?
Don’t get me started on my own hypocrisy. I’ll take that paid holiday to celebrate Christopher Columbus for his immaculate discovery. I take that check and call it reciprocity. But I wonder when they are going to change the narrative of this “great” country and actually make it great, for once.
Don’t get me wrong, there are great things and great people birthed out of and that rose above her real truth…
But America’s great at keeping her dirty little secrets clean….believe that.
-Aria Lott
Aria Y. Lott is a person who is continuing to evolve through sharing her experience and is finding there is not only power in the love of God, but power in using her own successes and failures to encourage others to push until they cross the finish line. Aria is a joyful soul. She has experienced much to the contrary but realizes our belief in the possibility or existence of joy is what makes it tangible and challenges you to open yourself up to the possibility of joy and see what happens.
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