Written by Elom & Wisdom Amouzou
Performed at The Manual Writing Center’s event: Stand Together, Break The Silence
18 percent of black people, 29 percent Latin Americans, 42 percent of women, 81 percent of white evangelicals, 61 percent Mormons, 56 percent who attend worship services once a week…What do they all have in common?
Yes, they voted for Trump. What we’d like to do is reflect and identify those parts of ourselves that might have voted for Trump. Those parts of ourselves that might hate ourselves. So, in the same vein as Malcolm X, we’d like to ask…
Who Taught You To Hate Yourself?
I was a 9 year-old black boy when I lost my African accent.
I was sitting in the back of the semicircle in that classroom when the teacher called on me to read out loud.
I was the only African student in the classroom and the second black boy in that room.
I could not wrap my pink tongue around those words fast enough to sound like their normal.
I was just a shy little boy scared of hearing my African accent echo within the walls of that classroom.
Now, when I reflect, I think of that moment as the first moment when my accent was slowly drowned out in the waves of their laughter.
If that 9 year old little black boy could talk to me today and hear me. I think he would look me straight in the eyes and I think he would ask…
Who Taught You To Hate Yourself?
Let me speak to former me’s, any Eloms that may have or may still stand for what the candidacy of Donald Trump has stood for.
They said make those naps manageable, and you said why not? Well my head is not a corporation and these follicles don’t need a manager.
Who taught me to hate the hair on my head, or the hair that used to be on my head?
Who taught me to see a pair of legs, and a set of thighs? Limbs to be picked like so much options from a menu? Bodies never moving apologetically enough.
Who taught me to think hope as submission? Who taught us to hate that which forms the rest of the world, not us?
Who taught me to see ripples of hatred bubbling through slanted words as illegitimate?
Who taught me to hear explosions of freedom crying manifested as strained vocal chords and contorted eyes twisting in this scorched climate? Who taught me to hear them? Who taught us to hear one another?
Who Taught You To Hate Yourself?
I was an eleven year-old black boy sitting on the bathroom floor with my mother’s hands in my hair.
I was staring at that ugly cracked out tile watching the spiders crawl when the foul smell hit me.
I almost puked at the weird smell in that white creamy greasy mixture.
I read the label…SODIUM HYDROXIDE.
I wondered how smooth I’d look as the Lye was breaking down the bonds of my kinky hair.
I clenched my jaw, tightened my fists, and tried to think of anything but the stinging scorpions changing the texture of my hair.
I wondered for a brief moment if my head would catch on fire. I ran head first under the faucet.
I thought I was bald. I couldn’t feel my curls and had never felt my hair laid down flat. Dead on my scalp.
I rushed to the mirror, removed the towel, and ran hands through that fine…good hair.
If I could look at that 11 year-old black boy in the face today, I think I would ask him…
Who Taught You To Hate Yourself?
Hey Elom! Who told you a future is bought at the price of silence before slaughter? Who said you could say ‘There’ without moving through the ‘they’ of here!
Who taught you to seek refuge in cages, the same ones that bent their steel bars around your torso till you felt your clavicle bend and break?
Hey Elom! They said she walked like she was supposed to be somebody. And you laughed. They didn’t know her walk was a battle cry for a body liberated, each step forward a thunderous clap against a world built to deny her dignity, each head roll a lightning strike against misogynoir.
Who told you laughter couldn’t be poison to be swallowed as your head convulses in fits of merriment? Who told you ‘Ha’ couldn’t also mean ‘Die’?
Hey hey, wait a second, breathe easy.
Take a slice of that air, and let each second of that 21 percent oxygen cradle the edges of your respiratory system. And remember! That air…that 21 percent oxygen? You bought at the price of a second offered in wait…in wait of that which we will build.
So breathe and breathe again until your breaths can no longer contain the body as it lunges somewhere, somewhere, free from where we are, where we learned the hate we were breathing.
Say There! Say Ha, say Die, then breathe and remember to clear the rubble, the hate withers, and in the remains build that ‘there’ where we will…where we could…where we might….simply be!
Who Taught You To Hate Yourself?
I was an 18 year-old black boy at the University of Colorado at Boulder studying Chemical & Biological Engineering.
I was one of maybe 50 students of color in the whole college of Engineering.
I fell in love with a girl we can call her Valentina (not the hot sauce). She was Mexican-American and I was 19 years-old when Valentina taught me a lesson I’ll never forget. She taught me the answer to the question: “What is the most dangerous force on earth?”
I got very close to Valentina. We talking stay up ‘til 4 in the morning eating late night Mickey D’s close.
I was over at her house in the basement the night it happened. I looked into her eyes. She looked back into mine and said words I will never forget…“Wisdom, if only you had blonde hair and blue eyes…”
I felt ugly. It took me years to figure it out and then finally I learned that she did not hate me.
I wish I could go back in time to the moment she finished that sentence and ask Valentina…
Who Taught You To Hate Yourself?
The most dangerous force on this earth is unhealed pain/trauma. Nearly half of all children under 5 right now are so-called minorities. 50 years from now, it won’t matter if we and this system teach them to hate themselves and their cultures.
Brother Cornel West says “To niggerize a people is to make them afraid and ashamed, scared and intimidated so that they are deferential to the powers that be.”
If we wish to transform our world, we must first be brave enough to ask ourselves “Who taught you to hate yourself?” And then we have to develop and solidify an unending love of ourselves and we have to be able to build a deep deep respect for what our respective people represent and be willing to fight for our freedom.
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Photo: Getty Images
So called “progressives” tried to, but ultimately failed and made me hate them instead. Hating white people and men due to false ideas of privilege… and now I don’t care what happens to alleged “oppressed” groups.
No Diz, maybe that hate was already in you. Either you are very sheltered or very naive to the things going on around you. I’m a Progressive and if we ain’t tried to do one thing, its make everyone inclusive in our cause. I’m multiracial and I see two different sides of all things. To say there is no racism or privilege You have to be either white or thw person this article is speaking about. Its not a pronlem to have “pride” in yourself as long as it don’t infringe on cause harm to someone else. If your “pride”… Read more »
I’m not sure if this is similar to what Diz meant to say, but here is my personal experience in the last couple of years being immersed in progressive preaching. Walking down the sidewalk, if a man passed by me going about his business, he would register in the back of my preoccupied mind as “man”. Now walking down the street, my mind registers “black man”, “white man”, “Asian man”… Whereas the colour of their skin used to be seen as an interesting aspect of their appearance, like the clothes they wore, now I can’t help but categorizing everyone according… Read more »
Thank you for underscoring what I meant. The assumption of hate is a projection on your part, but I will not allow your ignorance to foster guilt or hate within me.
No Diz, maybe that hate was already in you. Either you are very sheltered or very naive to the things going on around you. I’m a Progressive and if we ain’t tried to do one thing, its make everyone inclusive in our cause. I’m multiracial and I see two different sides of all things. So in other words it progressives dont do that sort of thing because you do not and porgressives are monolith therefore what Diz has experienced could not have possibly happened right? Sure there is privilege and racism but that doesn’t mean progressives are never wrong. Its… Read more »