by Tyson Amir
Using my family as an example, my grandfather purchased alcohol to satisfy his habit. That same alcohol forced him to morph into the monster that was terrorizing his own home. My Uncle Johnny bought heroin that was probably brought into this country via the Golden Triangle with some government/CIA/mafia connections. Most of these drugs ended up in urban America. Both my grandfather and uncle spent their own money on things that would damage them and eventually lead to their deaths. In essence, we voluntarily give money to our oppressors in exchange for the privilege of destroying ourselves and our communities. This idea essentially guarantees that we'll have more offspring who are "destined to be casualties of this chemical warfare." Our beautiful black family trees deserve a more fertile soil.
Under a Different Light (2001)
One day,
I was sitting at the dock of the bay
this cat walked up listening to Dr. Dre
and I thought about walking away
but he caught me in an awkward way
it's hard to explain
so I decided to engage
this man in a conversation
his hair was braided into some cornrows
he wore a jacket for the cold
with a cubic zirconia on his left earlobe
and he strolled like a gangster
with the infamous
hop in his step
face contorted by anger
my hypothesis
was a relationship
or his pockets weren't looking right
he sat without acknowledging me
but it didn't bother me
because it was obvious to see
he was preoccupied by thoughts running through his mind
we're all captives in this ball of confusion
for a period of time
trying to find solutions
invisible to the human eye
I kept one eye on his body language
but stayed focused on the most beautiful skyline the creator ever painted
contemplating
the beauties of this world
but I still noticed when he
inhaled deep
He startled me
once he started to speak
under his breath saying,
"Something's gotta change, this madness gotta end, I can't do this no more."
He caught my attention
because I know desperation when I hear it from prior experience
so I joined his conversation
and gave him a salutation,
Peace be unto you
I had seemed to
catch him off guard
but he regained his composure quickly
and said specifically
"What does that mean"
I replied, "truthfully,
the most important thing
because we all need peace to survive
and even though I don't know you personally
I still wish for peace in your life
and that's the first thing
that I say instead of saying hi.
He was like, "Yeah, I dig that,
but you one of them weird cats,
who be sitting on prayer mats
meditating all day.
I wish I was like that
but I lost my way some time ago and ain't found it every since."
I was like,
"There ain't no difference between me and you.
It's true I may hold another view
but we the same breed,
brother, we bleed the same things
and have the same needs.
Ain't none of us strong enough
to walk this path all alone.
And even the greatest of super heroes needs some saving at times.
Well at this time,
I could care less whether I live or die
matter of fact I'm leaning more towards death.
I got no job, a baby on the way
and I'm facing my 3rd F,
25 with an L.
I might as well end it here.
My only fears be incarceration and failure.
I don't want my child to grow up with that psychological fatherless paraphernalia.
It happened to me.
I never knew my pops
he'd been locked down my entire life.
I figured all non-whites was indigenous to cell blocks
my moms struggled to keep us well stocked
I had to hustle to get my first pair of shell tops
became a minimum wage slave as a bell hop
worked at the local Marriott
I had to cater to the demands of old rich white people
who thought they were greater than me
on some white supremacy
superiority complex
saying, Nigga, do that!
Boy, grab this!
Got me vexed
and one day I flexed on this old white dude
it wasn't my fault
I got hit with armed robbery and aggravated assault
when I never touched him
I was completely innocent
still all my freedoms were suspended
I got released after two years
without no incidents on the inside
but once on the outside
that F on my record
stood out like a scarlet letter on my chest
no one would hire me
because I was a potential liability
unemployment
I violated my probation
got locked up again
another disappointment
can you see this vicious cycle that's my life?
and I worked hard to do right
to do things that legal way
once again I got probation
and got a job as a mason
when I replied no felonies on my application
but it was only a matter of time
before they found out
background check
got released
but they said they wouldn't tell the police that I lied
and for months I tried everything
but playa, there were no opportunities
let down my lady
who was the only one to ever be true to me
and with a baby on the way
the only feasible way for me to get paid
is to slang D,
but killing my own people to make money don't make no sense to me.
I guess I got a conscience, right?
I would move but I ain't got no funds
so I'm forced to rot here
under this California sun
and when I was young
I was told the streets here were paved in gold
and the sky is the limit
but now I'm looking to end it in this frigid pacific ocean
here's my white flag I surrender
tell the white man he's the victor again
and I apologize to my sisters, my family and my friends
especially to my lady and my unborn child.
And then he paused a while
I let it sink in
and started thinking
what would I do if I was him.
If things had gone contrary to what I expected
instead of driving by,
if that cop stopped, beat me down and had me arrested
if one of my parents died
or if I was denied a chance to go to school
would I be who I am now?
And before I could answer that
he told me something that I would never forget
as long as I live
man, I figured by now that you'd be able to tell,
but I guess I overestimated you
expected you to understand this tale that's my life
but can't you tell, that I'm just you under a different light.
And if they ask you who it
was that died here tonight
please, make sure that they say my name right,
you know it's pronounced Ty-son.
Ty-son, what you saying you me
Ty-son, nah, homie you can't be
Who would you be if things in your life had gone differently
if life dealt you a hand that you couldn't handle
went from rags to riches
from fame to struggling
this life is precious but what are you really coveting
take a walk in someone else's shoes and experience their life
who would you be under a different light?
Who would you be under a different light?
Who would you be under a different light?
________________________________________________________________________
Reflections of a Black Boy
At all times in America, I as a black man am always mere inches or seconds away from jail, prison or death; either by state agents or traps of the street.
Your address can be 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or somewhere in the lower bottoms in West Oakland, you're still black. This means you are destined to live a second to third class existence. No amount of fame, money, stardom, or prestige removes the black from your skin that America hates so much.
In a first encounter the truth is before I am to be known as Tyson Amir, I will first be known as all the noise and stereotypes associated with black life. In America I am forever stereotypically black before human. _________________________________________________________________________
It is definitely important to acknowledge agency when discussing what is possible for men and women in our society. This body of work is not about scapegoating to escape accountability when it comes to matters that one can control. The system and the white power structure are not to blame for every misstep in a person's life. That system is at fault for myriad things; however, there are still areas where individuals can exercise control within the limited framework they possess, and it is essential that one seizes responsibility in those areas and makes the best out of what they have. All of us have responsibility when it comes to our lives, and we mustn't neglect that very real responsibility. That statement does not exonerate the inequity, the systemic preferential treatment directed toward white people in our society that allows them greater access to success.
I have experienced some tremendous successes in my life, and I am thankful and honored by the opportunities that I have received. I have not done any of this on my own; I was blessed with two parents who struggled hard to make things easier for their children. I owe a huge debt to my family and friends and those who came before me as standard bearers to make my path clearer. Yet and still, I could've easily found myself down a completely different path. It is possible that I may still find myself a victim of one of the clichéd tragic ends to black lives in America. I've safely made it into my third decade, but that doesn't mean the coast is clear for me now. Martin Luther King Jr., who is now celebrated by the American mainstream as one of the best examples of blackness in America, was killed at the age of thirty-nine, as was our dear brother Malcolm X. Both were killed because they stood up for basic rights that should've been freely given to black people, people of color, and poor folks. When you are black, there is no “get out of American racist persecution free” card. No age is safe. No amount of achievements and accolades prevent you from experiencing the "terrors" that befall blacks in America. Nothing. And this realization is a cold bitter fact of black life.
The point in all of this is to say that if you are born black in America, you are not given the same opportunities to live the life you want to lead. So much time and energy is dedicated to surviving this society that you aren't able to fully focus on self-growth and development. Imagine if great minds like Dr. King or Malcolm X could've dedicated the time they spent on liberation struggles to their own personal studies or on developing a talent or on their families. What might have been their fates? What might they have gifted to the world? We will never know. There are so many others who we can ponder over as well. What would have been the destinies of the millions who were unjustly enslaved here in America had they not been stolen from their homes to enrich the economies of the white world? We can ask the same question of what might have been for millions fed to the PIC, or the thousands terrorized, brutalized or lynched in these American killing fields, or swallowed by the traps of the streets. There are far too many to count. Almost nightly we learn of more lost lives about whom we're forced to ask what could've or should've been.
Those are all very tangible consequences of the racial apparatus at work. What we know well are the losses we can easily see and feel. Not every consequence is as evident as the "strange fruit” in southern trees or the millions of bodies locked up in jails and prisons. There are some consequences that are just as pernicious but they exist below the surface. They manifest in other physical, mental, spiritual, and psychological ways.
The business of attempting to survive in this world robs a person of essential time and energy they could be using to thrive and self-actualize. It also confronts one with the challenge of minimizing the harm caused by all the negative associations with the black life in American society. Those words, stereotypes, and images are all negative energies that are directed at the hearts, minds, and souls of black people here in America. It takes time and energy to survive this world as a black person. White people and others who benefit from white privilege have more time and energy afforded to them by this society because of their skin color. That extra time and energy they save due to white privilege is a very valuable asset that will never be in our hands here in America.
How does one begin to find out who they are when false stereotypes blind you and the outside world to your truth? The path to finding ourselves forces us to unlearn much of what we were taught about black people. Our system has no desire in providing the space for black people to learn about their beautiful black selves. That's a very real and very cold fact of black life. It is imperative for any people to know who they are. Our entire existence within the "wilderness of North America" has been totally controlled by white society. This society has no interest in providing a means for us to know ourselves. We've been prevented from practicing our native religions, languages, and cultures, systematically prevented from going to schools or segregated in inferior schools, all the while the larger society has lampooned black people with malicious false descriptions of what black, or the Negro, is. You cannot survive America without knowing yourself, and we cannot win against America without a knowledge of self. Minds that are far better than mine have spoken to this exact point.
Carter G. Woodson in his masterful work The Mis-Education of the Negro said:
“… if the Negro is to be elevated he must be educated in the sense of being developed from what he is, and the public must be so enlightened as to think of the Negro as a man. Furthermore, no one can be thoroughly educated until he learns as much about the Negro as he knows about other people.”
In this statement, he is stressing education as the path to extricating yourself from your constraints, but it must be coupled with learning about yourself and your people. Black folks are taught more about white folks and white culture and all other types of white Eurocentric information and only know Dr. King. That's all America deems as important for us to know. Black history becomes the “I Have a Dream” speech and “y'all was slaves, but now y'all free because white people were kind enough to free you.”
We must acquire what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad referred to as "knowledge of self." In Message to the Blackman in America he states:
“There is much misunderstanding among us because of our inferior knowledge of self. We have been to the schools where they do not teach us the knowledge of self. We have been to the schools of our slave-master children … The lack of knowledge of self is one of our main handicaps. It blocks us throughout the world ... If we, the so-called Negroes, do not know ou
r own selves, how can we be accepted by a people who have a knowledge of self?”
This society has not, cannot, and will not teach black people about themselves; this society is and will continue to exert pressure on the black life, exploiting the black life for purposes that are beneficial to the white society. This pressure and exploitation saps energy and time from black folks because they are so busy just trying to survive White America.
Here's a scenario to try to give some context to some of the intangible costs of surviving racism and how it literally takes away from a person's ability to be their fullest self. In their text, Living with Racism, Joe Feagin and Melvin Sikes, a sociologist and a psychologist respectively, quote a retired black psychologist who suggested what surviving racism is like: "… each human being has one hundred ergs of energy to live out their lives. The average man uses 50 percent of his energy dealing with the everyday problems of the world … then he has 50 percent more to do creative kinds of things that he wants to do. Now that's a white person. Now a black person also has 100 ergs; he uses 50 percent the same way a white man does, dealing with what the white man has [to deal with], so he has 50 percent left. But he uses 25 percent fighting being black, [with] all the problems being black and what it means."
If you find any meaning in this analogy, then you can begin to see how black folks have a much more dangerous battle to wage with far less energy and artillery on a daily basis just to survive. The impact of the battle takes its toll on the body. The stress and pain accumulates and eventually attacks the body from within. Medical research correlates high levels of stress with certain physical, psychological, and neurological ailments. Cardiovascular issues, high blood pressure, and hypertension can be linked to increased stress levels. What the presence of this stress can also do is destroy much vital human energy that could have been used in building better individuals and societies. These are the very real economic, emotional, spiritual, mental, and physiological costs that black people have to pay as a result of surviving racism. A major costs of this reality is the price of not really being able to explore one's self to the fullest extent. The converse to this is, while we are not able to fully develop ourselves unencumbered by the American racial apparatus, America at every turn is constantly telling us who we are or what roles are acceptable for us to play. This brainwashing requires even more time and energy to deprogram in order to find our true selves.