K Mcclendon - 'Protest' - The Good Men Project

By Button Poetry

K McClendon, performing at Honey in Minneapolis, MN..

Transcript provided by YouTube:

00:02
So there is nothing more American than a protest and
00:07
I say protest, because ain’t that what America been doing?
00:11
What she was built on. Ain’t that what them white folks did?
00:14
Threw a fit in the streets, fired guns until someone listened, and once they got what they wanted they forgot they home training.
00:21
Forgot who built this shit.
00:23
Rewrote history till it was so full of white lies that started to taste right, and now we can’t tell the difference
00:28
between education and Eurocentrism.
00:31
So here we are, in the street, blood up to our hips and we wield signs.
00:36
We can all find something to protest and still, when white people do it
00:41
they call it a party. When black folk do they call it a riot. And there is no greater way to explain oppression,
00:47
no better metaphor for privilege. The white man gets angry, it’s business. The black man gets angry, it’s dangerous.
00:54
See, the white man packed brown bodies like meat into the bellies of ship after ship. Brought them to his
01:01
America, and now he’s got the nerve to tell us to go back to Africa.
01:05
He says, “Ferguson, sit down, Kaepernick, stand up, hands up.” Shoot.
01:11
He say,
01:12
“You know, if they want to protest they can do it in a way that is easy to ignore. A way
01:18
that doesn’t make my white guilt claw out of my saltwater stomach. I hate the way it burns.”
01:25
You see, he don’t want to choke on all that history he kept at the far back o’ his throat.
01:29
But now anytime he fix his mouth to say any version of n*gga,
01:32
he can’t help but to cough up bones.
01:36
His teeth are ivory tombstones.
01:39
Tongue a wilted flesh flower, and I stand before him.
01:45
And I alone am the party and the riot.
01:47
I am the white rapper and the black cop. The black rapper dancing on a cop car unbothered,
01:54
breathing black joy given a body.
01:56
I have both thrown the cookout and been invited to it. I am the
02:01
interracial marriage that lasted till death did them part. My mother
02:06
married a black man knowing she may one day have to put back together the mosaic of his splintered body.
02:13
Knowing she would split her legs and birth an ocean. One darker than her mother.
02:18
Knew her child would have her eyes, but a wider nose.
02:22
But I wonder if she knew she would have to watch her heart march in the street over another acquittal.
02:28
Watch her heart cry in the street as blood
02:31
overflows and gurgles out of the sewers while they keep marching until it’s proved. They matter.