By Button Poetry
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Jahman Hill, performing at Rustbelt 2019 in St. Louis, MO.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:06
When the white girl says, “Cash me ousside, how bout dat?”
00:13
What she’s trying to say is, “Catch me outside. How about that?”
00:19
She’s trying to say is if you have problem with me,
00:22
we can proceed to exiting this facility under the premise
00:24
that once we have proceeded to the open air,
00:26
the rules, will no longer be the same.
00:28
In fact, it is highly probable to surmise that beyond these four walls,
00:33
outside to be exact, the rules no longer exist.
00:37
Allowing for us to engage in activities of which I can best describe as knucking
00:41
if you are in fact bucking, after taking all of this into consideration,
00:47
how much you’d be disposed to my proposition.
00:51
When a white girl says, “Cash me ousside. How about dat,”
00:54
she’s dropping hard consonants in order to sound harder,
00:58
to sound tougher.
00:59
She’s creating a caricature of black identity,
01:01
built on negative stereotypes,
01:02
and in her whiteness is reinforcing my blackness when she says,
01:06
“Cash me ousside, how about dat,”
01:08
what she means is her whiteness is fragile, her whiteness is fragile,
01:12
her whiteness is just as fragile as my masculinity.
01:16
What I mean is, I can relate.
01:20
I too have requested conference in an outdoor location,
01:24
followed by an inquiry of their thoughts on my proposal
01:27
in order to prove my manhood.
01:30
I too have lashed out in fear of being broken,
01:32
in fear of being seen as less than a man to them white boys.
01:35
Y’all, I know what it’s like to be the bully,
01:37
to mistake violence for a safe space,
01:39
to try and turn my body into Tom Brady,
01:42
my target into Randy Moss and make football out of these hands.
01:45
The funny thing is, I’ve only been in like two fights
01:51
both of which I lost.
01:53
In fact, if one more to “cash me ousside,”
01:57
I will recommend that we reconvene at an indoor location at a later date,
02:02
under the supervision of some administrative
02:05
or authoritative figure.
02:07
Basically, these hands ain’t as powerful as this mouth.
02:11
And I thought I could build a castle out of dropped hard consonants in shards
02:16
from my mother’s glass ceilings projecting the man
02:18
that I thought I was supposed to be but I was wrong.
02:24
So, when the white girl says, “Cash me ousside, how about dat,”
02:29
I get it. I can relate.
02:33
See, we were both reflections of our societal shortcomings,
02:38
too scared of shattering ourselves.
02:42
How about that?
02:46
(audience cheering and applauding)
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This post was previously published on YouTube and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video