How does it feel to be real?
I’m a great fan of Chuck Perkins, so don’t get me wrong about what I say here, these are purely my own musings. Chuck posted this to his Facebook page, but this didn’t sit right with me at all and not because it is exposing the underbelly of a root problem. I tried to slice and dice this statement of Chuck’s a number of different ways, substituting a number of different nouns and each time I came up with the same roughness in the back of my tongue. I looked at the comments that people wrote Chuck, giving him an atta boy on his way with words.
I thought about the answer to don’t shoot – and I tried to imagine what I as a mother would think if if this boy was holding that gun to my son’s head – would I see the backstory – would I care? The answer is no. Do I care that so many children are being raised into violence and poverty and see no roads out, a resounding yes. Still I don’t see this story of Chuck’s working for me – I don’t see the boy, and notice I say boy, because I don’t visualize a girl with a gun in this scenario, not that it couldn’t be a she, but I don’t see her, I see a boy, a he, scared and hopeless about to pull the trigger because he’s angry at something larger than his target. And I don’t see Chuck’s words here as anything else but exposé and I don’t see the good that comes from writing an exposé and having people comment – yeah, you’re for real Chuck, because yes, Chuck is for real here, as real as real can get, but there have been a lot of boys who came up living in that same hell who had something inside of them that wasn’t dead on arrival – they saw hope where none was given, they felt love instead of hate, and they didn’t see the enemy outside of them, but only the enemy within them that they had to overcome that we all have to overcome to be better than who we are, or who we came from, or where. The answer to Don’t Shoot is not Fuck you, it’s Don’t Shoot because you and me, brother, are one and the same.
The Answer to Don’t Shoot.
Fuck you, you self righteous bourgeois bastard. Yeah my momma had me when she was fifteen, but her and my grandma raised me the best way they knew how. You mutha fuckers are always saying why not graduate from high school and college and go out and get a good job. We’ll my grandma didn’t go past the fifth grade but she believed what was said about education. With the hope of a better future for my mom, grandma sent her to school everyday; she sent her to the school she was supposed to go to, and my mom did graduate but the certificate she received ain’t worth shit, my momma was told she barely reads on a fifth grade level. It’s all good; because despite that, I always had the nicest shit. My momma and all the niggas she fuck with is about that money. It’s called hustling. It’s a dangerous game but at least you’re living. Who gives a fuck about school? When my grandma died everybody talked about how good she was, how she worked until her death, even through part of her sickness, and how she went to church every Sunday. Nobody mentioned that for over forty years she lived from check to check, washing and ironing other people clothes and mopping their floors. She never had enough money for nothing, had never been on a vacation, hell my grandmother never left the state of Louisiana. As much as I love her she was as close to being a slave without being one as you can be. If me and my mom choose to live like my grandma you would like that ha, but I bet when the lights are about to be turned off you won’t be around to help keep that shit on. Before I put this pistol to your head I was somebody else’s problem. You didn’t give a fuck about me or them fucked up schools y’all make available to us. I love the rappers, they’re the only niggas representing for the hood. They reject the bull shit idea of working like a dog for minimum wages, barely able to make ends meet. I love their mantra get rich or die trying. You’re right, the problem of the poor is not your problem, and it’s not mine either. When your day is ruined by the paper’s mention of more spilled blood, don’t blame me. I know you would love it, if me and my kind went back to our holes and suffered in silence, but fuck you. No education no peace. No good role models, no peace. No equitable sharing of the American pie, no mutha fucking peace. Now give me that wallet, and get your pussy ass outta here.
March 17th, 2011 at 5:31 pm
[…] vigil for five teenagers who were recently shot, one killed. Chuck Perkins wrote in his Facebook an account of what a youth might say when he holds a gun to your head and you say, “Don’t […]