Written in 2016 but ever relevant now, I’m sharing this piece on the podcast. To support the continuation of my podcast, please consider supporting at patreon.com/dcolin and remember to sign up for my newsletter at dcolin.com.
Poem text:
When America was great the buffalo in all their glory, proud mammals, must have known that
even then before the West was filled with states that they would at least, at the very least die
with dignity, that every part of them would be used, that it was an honor, that the code, the
circle of life would be honored like the lessons taught to Simba were cross cultural, immune to
race and color and breed, that the land, the connection to it, the music inside the soil would
always sing to the people and the people would hear it. Perhaps now the buffalo are rolling in
their graves if of course there is anything left of their skeletons to roll. But America
America was great once, back when tea bags cast over ships told the British off like a neck roll
and a long sucking of the teeth or maybe that is too colorful a comparison. Maybe it was more
like a two year old tantrum. MINE! MINE! Like a child’s way of ownership, owning things that no
one in their two years of life would know how to own but knew ownership by piercing the word
through the air, MINE! And then destroying it all, if I can’t have it then no one can.
When is it that we learn power? When do we become greedy? When is it that our needs
supersede another’s? How is it that we birth oppression? Does it feed from our own breasts?
Would you call it murder if we decided oppression wasn’t fit to live? To sit next to us at the
table, you know that table that everyone is trying to sit at. Who made that table anyway?
I digress.
America was great. That time when it occupied Haiti. That time when it occupied the Dominican
Republic. That time when it occupied Nicaragua. That time when it occupied Cuba. That time
when it occupied Somalia. That time when it occupied Iraq. That time when it occupied…Wait,
No, America was great during the Civil War, when America was bipolar,
torn between two sides. To nigger or not nigger. Did you think this was about cotton? America
has being mourning over not niggering ever since. America was great when new ways to nigger
were invented.
America was great when Sally Hemings was Thomas Jefferson’s mistress, when Sojourner Truth
was still Isabella Baumfree and learned to read and write, when Kunta Kinte didn’t have to
change his name to what was it again?...
America was great when Martin Luther King lived a long life and Malcolm X saved his grandson
from murder after cheating his own death.
Brown v. Board of Education actually meant equal education which meant equally allocated
funds which meant Black neighborhoods matter, I mean All neighborhoods matter. When
America was great, prisons were turned into schools and we became the most educated
country in the world. Two million, one hundred forty-five thousand and one hundred people [1]
were rehabilitated, restored to a normal life in America’s greatness.
When America was great Langston Hughes changed the title of his poem ‘I, Too’ to ‘I Am’
I am America
I am America
I was always America
Right?
So naturally when the president says make America great again
The operative word being again
Because greatness was lost somewhere in America’s history and he’s the one to bring it back
When the president says make America great again
He must be talking about raising the buffalo from the dead. He must be saying give the land
back. He must be honoring the legacy of the Natives. He must be talking about reparations. He
must be talking about time travel. He must be talking about Africans not being imported like a
cash crop. He must be talking about demolishing walls instead of building them. He must be
talking about justice. Social justice. Educational justice. Political justice. Economic justice. He
must be talking about justice. Damn, he must be submitting his resignation.
Right?
Right?
1 This number was taken from www.prisonstudies.org
Get full access to D Colin at dcolin.substack.com/subscribe
