King Yaw – Ancestral Ghosts [Video]

By Button Poetry

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King Yaw, performing at the Stonewall International Poetry Slam in Baltimore, MD.

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Transcript provided by YouTube (unedited)

0:06
i’ve been told i can’t talk about the
0:08
black experience in america
0:11
been told i can’t talk about it in the
0:12
classroom in front of my college
0:14
students in my poems
0:16
because i sound less like malcolm x and
0:19
more like nelson mandela
0:21
like this one time after performing the
0:23
blackest poem i have ever written this
0:25
white girl walks up to me and says but
0:27
wait do you see yourself as an african
0:29
or an african-american because i feel
0:32
like you’re more of a pause first of all
0:34
you don’t get to feel
0:39
you don’t get to feel any type of way
0:42
about my blackness as if this black can
0:45
be transferred like it was never
0:47
conquered
0:48
i’ve been told i can’t talk about the
0:50
black experience in america because i
0:53
sound more like t’challa and less like
0:55
killmonger like after performing another
0:58
black poem this black boy walks up to me
1:00
and says your type of black is not fit
1:03
enough to talk about our trauma you know
1:05
nothing about chains whips or bullets so
1:09
while basking in my rage and in need of
1:11
some ancestors i decided
1:14
that i would take the slave ship all the
1:17
way back to 1332.
1:20
[Music]
1:24
my
1:26
while sailing the middle of the atlantic
1:29
ancestral ghosts called my name from
1:31
deep down the ocean i felt their spirits
1:35
pull me into the circle to cast
1:37
a protection spell just so i could make
1:40
it safe to the west african coast when i
1:42
arrived
1:44
i saw mansa musa
1:46
king of the mali empire i asked him am i
1:49
black enough and he said
1:52
he said my blackness was thicker than
1:55
blood so he shipped me to 1892 where i
1:58
saw yasantoa
2:00
queen mother of ajitsu in the ashanti
2:03
empire who led the war of the golden
2:06
stool against british colonialism i
2:09
asked her am i black enough and she said
2:12
bear man
2:13
what’s in ideology said my blackness was
2:16
born in the midst of war by warriors
2:20
that looked like you and me so don’t
2:22
tell me i’m not black enough to talk
2:24
about black issues in america
2:28
when the drunk white girl called me a
2:30
in college
2:31
she did not go to ancestry.com to fact
2:34
check if my grandmother’s grandmother
2:36
was a slave
2:38
when west african immigrants ahmadu
2:41
dyalo was shot and killed 41 times by
2:44
new york police they were shooting at
2:46
his blackness not his accent
2:49
skin
2:50
is pray for the dogs regardless of which
2:53
side of the park we got our training and
2:55
so in our blackness i bind us
3:01
it’s our ancestors dying wish
3:05
[Applause]
3:06
[Music]
3:06
[Applause]

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This post was previously published on YouTube.

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