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For Renisha McBride and the Other Black women who Fight back after Death

Black women reside within both axes of white supremacy and misogyny. The capitalist media portrays us as “angry” and “irrational” to de-humanize and de-legitimize our self- defense against a multitude of systematic attacks. In doing so, we are perceived by mainstream white society as deserving of the oppression that we are constantly dodging or breaking through everyday. Manners, respectability and silence will never guarantee equal rights, respect or freedom from brutality.

This poem is dedicated to the Black women whose murders inspired demands, uprising, and organizational resistance to racism, patriarchy, capitalism and all oppressive forces that bind our international struggle for liberation. In life, they inspired their families. In death, they inspire resistance.

#SayHerName
#RenishaMcBride

Tiffany Wallace

October 20, 2015
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White fear is a dangerous thing
It obscures reality terrifyingly
Black woman asks for some help
Late night car accident
trying to save herself

A white man hears knocking

And sees her Black
Assumes her desperate pleas
Are weapons to attack

Her tears and blood
Are actually bullets and knives
And her want for paramedics
Is just another white lie

“I feared for myself”
With loaded gun in hand
And a pale trigger finger
Demanding she leave “his property” stolen land

The “kindness of strangers”?
There is none to report
Within seconds
He shot her dead on that porch

Society demands Black forgiveness
Cause at his sentencing
he cries?
But he didn’t apologize
Until he saw the judges eyes

Apologies and “so sorrys” and Renisha McBride is still dead
Another white male executioner
Fear all in his head

And they have the nerve
To tell me, “what’s the big deal?

Another tv show about Black women
Who cheat the government and steal”

Another joke where we have attitude
Where we fly off the handle
Depicted as scary and rude

Where society only sees rage
Pages are ripped from our life story
Where we Breathe, Laugh and Age

But

Shouldn’t we feel enraged?
The descendants of slaves
Stolen milk for white babes
The jezebels or the maids
With choices displayed
Sexy on a stage
Or locked in a cage
For a slave wage

We shouldn’t have attitude
Despite all these wrongs?
We should feel honored
they even want
to hear our songs?
Well not “our” songs
The songs racism wants to hear us sing

So we can be laughed at
And be entertaining

Who wants to hear the words of
The Black woman’s wrath
Who might not
snap her fingers when she
Takes offenders to task

Who isn’t drowned by a laugh track
When she takes the last laugh
And puts them on blast
With consequences that last
And mobilizes in mass
Wealthy homes converted & crashed
Food & medicine freely passed
Oppression is dashed
Her opinions are asked
Her responses range from
Class, Crass or maybe this time
She’ll pass

The audacity of their ignorance
Is a mirror
Is a reflection
Of capitalism’s tentacles
That limit her professions
That portray her in sections
Instill fear instead of assistance and humane protection

Be even at the truth will they miss her lessons?
Will there be confessions?
Will they make concessions?
Or will there be more oppression?

She will be suppressing
Her feelings
Just to get through today
And she’ll appear

Polite

Cause they won’t listen to what she has to say until
One day
And a series of hours
Where we all fight back
And organize resistance
With not just Black
But for all Black

Women

Who are angry for the reasons
The world acknowledges
and sees
We won’t be asked to accept
racist apologies
And it won’t be our bodies
Descended from the trees

No
Not this time
And never again
This time she won’t be angry then
This time
She’ll grin

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