Black Lives Matter Content

Here, you'll find the text and the URLs to all three of the texts we looked at in class and will look at in class. Go through the last two poems and identify:

1) What language does the author use?

2) How does this language help convey his message?

3) How does this poem impact me as a person?

Write your answer to these three questions on a sheet of paper (answer them for both poems). Bring this sheet to class. In addition, begin to search for your own personal poem. You don't necessarily have to have it by tomorrow, but it'd be extremely advisable so that you don't forget over the weekend.

Shane Smith TED Talk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us70DN2XSfM&feature=youtu.be

Growing up, I didn't always understand why my parents made me follow the rules that they did. Like, why did I really have to mow the lawn? Why was homework really that important? Why couldn't I put jelly beans in my oatmeal?

My childhood was abound with questions like this. Normal things about being a kid and realizing that sometimes, it was best to listen to my parents even when I didn't exactly understand why. And it's not that they didn't want me to think critically. Their parenting always sought to reconcile the tension between having my siblings and I understand the realities of the world, while ensuring that we never accepted the status quo as inevitable.

I came to realize that this, in and of itself, was a very purposeful form of education. One of my favorite educators, Brazilian author and scholar Paulo Freire, speaks quite explicitly about the need for educationto be used as a tool for critical awakening and shared humanity. In his most famous book, "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," he states, "No one can be authentically human while he prevents others from being so."

I've been thinking a lot about this lately, this idea of humanity, and specifically, who in this world is afforded the privilege of being perceived as fully human. Over the course of the past several months, the world has watched as unarmed black men, and women, have had their lives taken at the hands of police and vigilante. These events and all that has transpired after them have brought me back to my own childhood and the decisions that my parents made about raising a black boy in America that growing up, I didn't always understand in the way that I do now.

I think of how hard it must have been, how profoundly unfair it must have felt for them to feel like they had to strip away parts of my childhood just so that I could come home at night.

For example, I think of how one night, when I was around 12 years old, on an overnight field trip to another city, my friends and I bought Super Soakers and turned the hotel parking lot into our own water-filled battle zone. We hid behind cars, running through the darkness that lay between the streetlights,boundless laughter ubiquitous across the pavement. But within 10 minutes, my father came outside, grabbed me by my forearm and led me into our room with an unfamiliar grip. Before I could say anything,tell him how foolish he had made me look in front of my friends, he derided me for being so naive.Looked me in the eye, fear consuming his face, and said, "Son, I'm sorry, but you can't act the same as your white friends. You can't pretend to shoot guns. You can't run around in the dark. You can't hide behind anything other than your own teeth."

I know now how scared he must have been, how easily I could have fallen into the empty of the night,that some man would mistake this water for a good reason to wash all of this away.

These are the sorts of messages I've been inundated with my entire life: Always keep your hands where they can see them, don't move too quickly, take off your hood when the sun goes down. My parents raised me and my siblings in an armor of advice, an ocean of alarm bells so someone wouldn't steal the breath from our lungs, so that they wouldn't make a memory of this skin. So that we could be kids, not casket or concrete. And it's not because they thought it would make us better than anyone else it's simply because they wanted to keep us alive.

All of my black friends were raised with the same message, the talk, given to us when we became old enough to be mistaken for a nail ready to be hammered to the ground, when people made our melanin synonymous with something to be feared.

But what does it do to a child to grow up knowing that you cannot simply be a child? That the whims of adolescence are too dangerous for your breath, that you cannot simply be curious, that you are not afforded the luxury of making a mistake, that someone's implicit bias might be the reason you don't wake up in the morning.

But this cannot be what defines us. Because we have parents who raised us to understand that our bodies weren't meant for the backside of a bullet, but for flying kites and jumping rope, and laughing until our stomachs burst. We had teachers who taught us how to raise our hands in class, and not just to signal surrender, and that the only thing we should give up is the idea that we aren't worthy of this world.So when we say that black lives matter, it's not because others don't, it's simply because we must affirm that we are worthy of existing without fear, when so many things tell us we are not. I want to live in a world where my son will not be presumed guilty the moment he is born, where a toy in his hand isn't mistaken for anything other than a toy.

And I refuse to accept that we can't build this world into something new, some place where a child's name doesn't have to be written on a t-shirt, or a tombstone, where the value of someone's life isn't determined by anything other than the fact that they had lungs, a place where every single one of us can breathe.

Thank you.

Todrick Hall - Water Guns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuG1b3PCH7I&feature=youtu.be

When I was just a little boy, me and my father

Would go out back and play a little game of cops and robbers

One day he cocked the gun and pointed at my mom and shot her

And I cried and cried with laughter after I realized it was just water

But things have changed now, the world just ain't the same now

We're frightened but we need to be enlightened, use our brain now

People pointing fingers, trying to find someone to blame now

Ashamed how the game of cops and robbers ain't a game now

These ain't water guns

And please save all our sons and daughters

What we fighting for?

'Cause these ain't water guns

Water guns, no more (x2)

Look around, tell me how we ever got here

We fightin' hard, but the reasoning is not clear

Stop here, where is the love if it's not here

The solution to not getting shot here is not fear

And we can fly away on a balloon to another land

Or we can make this home, find another plan

Too much blood on these yellow brick streets

And history repeats until we can finally hold our brother's hand

These ain't water guns

And please save all our sons and daughters

What we fighting for?

Cause these ain't water guns

Water guns, no more

These ain't water guns

And please save all our sons and daughters

What we fighting for?

'Cause these ain't water guns

Water guns, no more

So take my hand in your hand

And let's stand if we can

Pray for all the fallen ones

These ain't (these ain't)

These ain't water guns

So take my hand in your hand

And let's stand if we can

Pray for all the fallen ones

These ain't (these ain't)

These ain't water guns

And please save all our sons and daughters

What we fighting for?

'Cause these ain't water guns

Water guns, no more

These ain't water guns

And please save all our sons and daughters (x3)

Taye Diggs Poem

I’m finished brushing my teeth

I’m coming down the stairs

I’m ready for my bedtime story

Does anybody care

——————————————

I’m standing in my P. J.s

My bunny slippers on

But Ma and Pa are watching tv

I think something’s wrong

——————————————-

Why is mommy crying Pa

She’s pointing at the screen

It’s like she knows them people

People I never seen

——————————————–

And why does daddy look so mad

Mommy do you know

He keeps on rubbing the side of his head

And walking to and fro

——————————————-

What is this tv show

—————————————–

And now I start to feel real weird

My insides getting heavy

I yell at mommy one more time

Daddy Are you forgetting

—————————————-

Mama slowly turns to me

Her face fighting the tear

She cut the tv off right quick

She kneels and pulls me near

Why is daddy leaving the room

Why did he slam the door

Mommy searches for her words

In the matted carpeted floor

—————————————-

Honey something very bad happened

We didn’t want you to see

But we just saw a man get shot

Right on our colored tv

————————————-

Why would someone shoot that man

You both said guns were not good

Did the man steal or rob someone

Was he not doing what he should

—————————————

Then I feel my mama’s anger

The straight stiff of her back

No she hissed through her teeth

Police shot him cuz he was black

—————————————-

I tilt my head with question

As Daddy enters still blue

But my skins dark just like the Man’s

Does that mean I’ll die too?

—————————————–

Ma and pa stare at each other

Blank scared looks on the front of their heads

Neither of them could say a word

As I imagine myself……. Dead.