YOU ALMOST HAD ME.

YOU ALMOST HAD ME! (poem, about the existing racial climate and the one that sometimes exists at its worst in our own minds)

almost in fact, I recant
you had me right there with you, ready to march and petition
you actually set my sights until
they were perfectly aligned with your vision
THEY are out to get us
THEY are diabolical, individually cunning
focused on a sole purpose
anytime THEY saw you moving ahead...to come gunning
running
at breakneck speed
not only to be certain you'd never get what you want
more importantly, YOU'D NEVER ACQUIRE the things you need
THEY are working 'round the clock to keep you down
and all I had to do to corroborate your testimony
was catalogue the racial injustice simply by watching the news
'til I became convinced that the conspiracy you were showing me
was FACT...and not one disgruntled black man's views
and we engaged in hours long conversations about how...
no matter what you did in this lifetime
THEY would make certain you'd never receive your just due
and you almost had me
until I started making more positive moves of my own
that caused me to update my perspective about...you
like how THEY plotted and schemed until you were
successfully incorporated into "the system"
"pulled over for a routine traffic stop" you told me
and you told me through angry tears,
how being jailed would cause you to lose your job
and THEY wouldn't even listen
I later found out, what you failed to mention,
was that you weren't arrested for not obeying traffic rules
you went down because you hadn't paid child support
for your kids since four years prior...come June
but without that initial knowledge
I was right there, on the "THEY AIN'T SHIT" bandwagon
cursed THEIR birth and relegated THEM
to the status of collective, sinister madmen
and by the time you told me that your job fired you
I was convinced of the validity of your woes, upon reflection
I cursed every member of the THEY who had done you wrong
but you never told me that a background check they ran
revealed your priors for domestic violence, trafficking
and felony possession!
you always flipped it to your direct advantage
proudly wearing the pitiable face of a brotha
who was just "trying to do the right thing"
but couldn't,
because THEY found new and inventive ways to do damage
you told me about penalties on school loans THEY put in place
that kept you behind the financial eight ball
and when the next job let you go
you told me it was because THEY held a natural fear of strong, black men
mentioning nothing about all your unexcused absences from work
the excessive tardiness and being away from your desk every ten minutes to take personal phone calls
funny how all of this was revealed to me gradually
and up until that time I thought THEY were holding you down
and as a BLACK woman in a racist society, I empathized
I tell you, bruh...you almost had me
then my owns strides in upward mobility brought clarification
as I realized your current condition wasn't so much
what THEY were doing as you using THEM as justification
for one black man's ridiculous choices
that would have had just about the same consequence
regardless of color
and because so much injustice and hatred exists
it was easy for me at first, to blame your woes on another
easy for me to believe, damn near
that THEY held conference calls at night, tracking your every move
counteracting your positives with a negative, simply out of fear
it didn't seem so ridiculous a notion that THEY lost sleep
tracking your every progressive move
attempting to figure out how if you had one "win"
THEY could turn it into a thousand "defeats"
until I started analyzing my own choices
to see how often I was justified in playing the "race card" in my deck
and used that debilitating paranoia with intent, or subconsciously
then, WHOA! - I realized so many of my barriers were self imposed
having less to do with any system THEY had set in place
and alot more with how much of a challenge THEY received from...me
I'm not saying there aren't plenty of black men and women
with legitimate claims of wrongdoing based on color
having run headfirst into barriers THEY created
that's a reality that I definitely have to face
but looking back on how you've lived your life
has everything to do with the arrested development of your evolution
and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with race
I can only pray you don't influence your peers
convincing them that no matter what they do
that they'll never succeed because of THEM, will never realize a goal successfully
because until I separated myself from you and your whining
I spent less time going after my dreams than being convinced they shouldn't exist
and I've accomplished so much since then that I wasn't attempting before
I'm good now, but...you almost had me.

TERRI '07