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Saturday, 16th May 2020, 0202
Dark faces
invisible in most places
They’re blinded to our plight
Everyday of my life is a fight
No matter how much I want to
I can’t be blind
I’m often in spaces where there are too few dark faces
Being myself unapologetically
Is caricature-ised depending on what stereotypes had arrived before my time
I’m black and I do code switch
I speak vernacular and there’s nothing ghetto about it
There’s also nothing threatening about gesticulated emphasis
I love jerk chicken and my Jamaican heritage
But why do I feel I should tone down or hide it
To assimilate into these spaces?
Why is my passion mistaken for aggression?
Why do these spaces not understand my existence?
Are they intimidated hence the misinterpretation?
All is not normal in my world
My black sense is tingling
Someone said something fishy
Their bants were rather risky
Unaware of the lines crossed… possibly
No excuses
The black experience is littered with such things
We’re educated to shrug it off
Being invisible is expected
Being overlooked and muted in other spaces is something we’ve come to live with
There’s an underlying sense that we should be grateful for being able to access the spaces
That less than a lifetime ago we weren’t allowed in
Centuries of exploitation, subordination and captivity
No wonder there’s no one in the structure of society who represents and fights to protect me.
No one in politics, finance, legal or medically
Puts their lives on the line so I can have a voice in the dominant space of society.
Everyone who stood up against injustice in all of black history
Backdrop being the spaces of western society
Was either killed by the ruling regime
discredited, imprisoned
Or destabilised by people who look just like me
Who were funded by the ruling authority as they were a threat to the power structure of dominant regime.
It’s time for me to stand tall, take accountability and be vocal so we aren’t muted or invisible
In the spaces populated by the dominant factions of society.
