Speaking of Mutes
Muted movements
Silenced stories
Too much European white noise
Drowning out our presence
Within the blinding static
I see
Black children flunking out
Failing classes
Don’t our children know?
Of academia in Ancient Africa
Once at a volume so high
The Greeks couldn’t sleep at night
Burning the midnight oil trying to figure out our Arithmetic
Lebombo and Ishango bones
Mathematical mysteries
Knowledge they would soon steal and keep
Burning us with their white fire
Centuries of white fires
Hate
Centuries of bootleg knowledge
Yet
We still say Alexander is
Great?
It wouldn’t be so if I had written the story
Our story
About how scholarly scripture was ripped out of our sun-kissed hands
About how early our children were kicked out of our sun-kissed lands
Doomed for generations
In suffocating tombs of colonization
Country-sized coffins
With this cacophonous literature
Read by white candlelight
Relentless in its pursuit to maim my brothers’ past
Maybe my pledge of allegiance wasn’t meant to last
Placing my hand over a colonized heart
Singing songs of bombs and forgetting tribal chants
Giving proof through the night
That I still see
Black children flunking out
Failing classes
Being taught to walk backwards through time
With 50 stars in their eyes
I’d say
Class is failing them
Julian Daniels
Image by SavannahGrey
Jayulian
