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A Good Fucking Start: For James Baldwin and the Contradictions He Was Forced to Live<\/p>\n
\u201cI want what you want.
\nI want to be left alone\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
This is probably the most powerful thing James Baldwin ever said
\nBecause it speaks to an \u201ceveryday\u201d
\nWhere \u201cnothing much happens\u201d;
\nAnd, \u201ceverything is possible\u201d.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s 2025, and there still hasn\u2019t been a day like that in America for Black people.<\/p>\n
People tell me that there has been progress and hope<\/p>\n
But, it\u2019s the hope that kills us.<\/p>\n
Hope is not a strategy.<\/p>\n
We are still crossing the Edmond Pettis Bridge;
\nNot safely reaching the other side.<\/p>\n
And, that bridge is still named after a Klansman.<\/p>\n
I want a day when Jackie Robinson isn\u2019t deleted.<\/p>\n
Or, the Tuskegee Airmen and Elenor Roosevelt aren\u2019t a blow to the status quo.<\/p>\n
Celebrate Ira Hayes \u2014 hands clutching a flag while under fire at Iwo Jima.<\/p>\n
And, Native American Code Talkers who performed the healing ritual: \u201cWhere the Two Met Their Father\u201d<\/p>\n
So, that they could return home safely from World War 2<\/p>\n
Celebrate Japanese heroes who were the real Mr. Miyagis.<\/p>\n
While little Mr. Sulus languished in American concentration camps.<\/p>\n
While some of their dogged brothers on the other side refused to surrender and fought WW2 until 1974<\/p>\n
Shout out to Ononda, hero of Japan;
\nWho proves to us how difficult it is,
\nTo just surrender;
\nAnd, let it go.<\/p>\n
Celebrate the masculinity of Black soldiers who liberated concentration death camps.<\/p>\n
And, recognize their efforts to bring that virility home from Europe
\nhow it fueled the birth of the Civil Rights movement.<\/p>\n
How it helped lead to the creation of a Jewish homeland
\nBlack Dominoes falling against Middle Eastern dice
\nOn a World Backgammon Board<\/p>\n
Ebony reverberations!<\/p>\n
I want Neo-apartheid: the sequel
\nAnd New Jim Crows
\nTo be recognized at home and abroad<\/p>\n
I reckon the 50,000 \u2014and rising\u2014dead in Palestine bring us back again to a cyclic return of blatant segregations.<\/p>\n
States formed exclusively on ideology must first drive out the Undesirable
\nOther.<\/p>\n
And, criminals must be deported without due process.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m looking at you MAGAmerica with your gerrymandered voting districts
\nAnd voter suppression laws.<\/p>\n
I want that to be well known and taught in history classes \u2014 the violence that led to non-violence.<\/p>\n
And, I don\u2019t want my history to be deleted from text books published in Texas.<\/p>\n
I want people to remember that Patton requested the Black tankers.<\/p>\n
That men who flew the Flying Fortress requested the Red Tails to escort them on their suicidal missions to fight Nazis.<\/p>\n
Nazis that seem to be rising again here in America;
\nAlong with hooded and masked assistant tyrants who terrorize Americans<\/p>\n
Only to be mass pardoned.<\/p>\n
I want to walk into a store and not have people come up to me and ask me to help them find a sweater.<\/p>\n
\u2018Cause I don\u2019t work at the fuckin\u2019 store; I\u2019m shopping too.<\/p>\n
And, I want cabs to stop for me.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t want the Enola Gay stricken from American History because of the word \u201cgay\u201d.<\/p>\n
And, I want James Baldwin
\nLangston Hughes
\nBilly Porter
\nBilly Holiday
\nJackie “Moms” Mabley
\nAnd so many others to be recognized for what they contributed to American culture.<\/p>\n
Who and what they choose to kiss behind closed doors is their own goddamn business.<\/p>\n
Take your hands off women\u2019s wombs
\nEspecially when
\nMenstruation
\nFemale orgasm
\nFertile mucus
\nEmbryo implantation
\nAnd, menopause
\nAre still mysteries to you.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what Baldwin meant when he said \u201cI want to be left alone,<\/p>\n
Just like you\u201d.<\/p>\n
I want to see subaltern lives in textbooks;
\nBecause we are the history of the everyday.<\/p>\n
And, I don\u2019t need Taylor Sheridan to explain me or my Native Brothers and sisters to me.<\/p>\n
We were Sheriff Bass Reeves
\nAnd, Buffalo soldiers
\nAnd, cowboys
\nAnd, calvary men
\nBefore he was a gleam in his daddy\u2019s eye.
\nWay back before John Dutton was a MAGA masturbation fantasy.<\/p>\n
And, I don\u2019t want to be a sidenote in a Francis Ford Coppola movie either.<\/p>\n
And if you have stayed with me this far and seen the contradictions inherent in this poem;<\/p>\n
Well.<\/p>\n
Life is deeply ambiguous.<\/p>\n
And \u201c#COMPLICATED\u201d!<\/p>\n
This is NOT a DEI poem;
\nIt\u2019s an American and World History poem.<\/p>\n
Is that all I want?<\/p>\n
No.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s a good fucking start.<\/p>\n
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(By Heidi Lindemann and Michael Perry)<\/p>\n
(Image Credit 1: Marc St. Gil, “Jesus Christ Hope of the World” \/ Smithsonian National Museum of American History<\/a>)<\/p>\n