culture fix

When i was a child i was told of the heritage i had,
Proud white messiahs,
Civilizing heathens, and modernizing chaos,
Proud white warriors of freedom,
Spirits of equity, propriety
And good ole' fucking tea time.

i wondered why my ancestors always
Tried to wash their hands in holy water,
Why their pale hands turned red after mentioning amerika's birth…

Like my childhood fairy tales, i asked, "are you my mother?"
And, "where have you come from, Oh, great white hope?"

Suddenly there were 10 million Africans,
Ten million chains,
Ten million plantations
Ten million bibles,
Suddenly there were 80 million "Indians,"
Eighty million land sales,
Eighty million wars,
Eighty million missionaries

And 90 million graves.

Yes, my people are god-fearing christians,
And just like our pale skinned deity,
Penises have run our family for over 2,000 years
Yes, the bright white peoples have stuck their:
Swords, cannons, guns, crosses, flag poles, oil wells
And dicks, into the entire world.

And now the moon as well.

Fucking christians with tea and crumpets,
Chatting about how much money they've made
All these years.

So, then i was really curious.

i had to ask my fathers,
Me, a bastard child in another people's land, i had to ask them,
"who were these people that were slain for our liberty?"
And then, in the silence left by my pale educators

The voices of their casualties arose
Through the remaining dirt,
Through history books burned and banned,
Through loopholes in a decadent system
on dances in the wind, blood and mace on sidewalks,
acid in the water cycle, smog in the sky,
The scars of the people of the sun…

They spoke of the Spanish invaders,
Slaughtered by Arawak warriors.
Fifty dead along Nat Turner's path.
John Brown's body swinging like strange fruit.

British troops taking every nationalist male over eighteen
From their homes in Belfast, N. Ireland
Gandhian Indians weaving their own cloth,
To help force the British out of India.

Makhno's ukranian peasant army, 1917.
Thousands of Spanish women armed to defeat Franco, 1936.
Lucy Parsons and Mother Jones defying segregation in 1905
To form "One Big Union," to topple the bosses.

Millions and millions of battles in a never - ending war
Against greed.

These stories have revealed my true heritage;
They have shown me both the past and the future.

My past is littered with European tyrants and revolutionaries:
Mussolini and the IRA
John Brown and Columbus
Ronald Reagan and Ned Ludd
And somewhere along the way,
All of them became "white."

White folks have been trying for centuries
To win control of the planet
Through slavery, brutality, war, Capitalism and christianity,
All the world is under the control of White power.

But what is the benefit in this world that white folks own in the name of profit?

No need to own the world.

Far better to live in it, live among it.

My future family, the one i'm most proud of,
Is the family of folks of all races and cultures
Who have spent centuries living, dying and killing
For social revolution.

My people live for respect, dignity and peace,
"Liberty, justice and democracy."
Ours is a family of struggle.
And the struggle will continue
Until "whiteness" is buried…
Until the land has healed…
Until life is for living…

Until all are free…

- Taylor Sparrow