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“What’s Genocide?” by Carlos Andres Romez
their high school principal
told me I couldn’t teach
poetry with profanity
so I asked my students,
“Raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Holocaust.”
in unison, their arms rose up like poisonous gas
then straightened out like an SS infantry
“Okay. Please put your hands down.
Now raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Rwandan genocide.”
blank stares mixed with curious ignorance
a quivering hand out of the crowd
half-way raised, like a lone survivor
struggling to stand up in Kigali
“Luz, are you sure about that?”
“No.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Carlos—what’s genocide?”
they won’t let you hear the truth at school
if that person says “fuck”
can’t even talk about “fuck”
even though a third of your senior class
is pregnant.
I can’t teach an 18-year-old girl in a public school
how to use a condom that will save her life
and that of the orphan she will be forced
to give to the foster care system—
“Carlos, how many 13-year-olds do you know that are HIV-positive?”
“Honestly, none. But I do visit a shelter every Monday and talk with
six 12-year-old girls with diagnosed AIDS.”
while 4th graders three blocks away give little boys blowjobs during recess
I met an 11-year-old gang member in the Bronx who carries
a semi-automatic weapon to study hall so he can make it home
and you want me to censor my language
“Carlos, what’s genocide?”
your books leave out Emmett Till and Medgar Evers
call themselves “World History” and don’t mention
King Leopold or diamond mines
call themselves “Politics in the Modern World”
and don’t mention Apartheid

“Carlos, what’s genocide?”
you wonder why children hide in adult bodies
lie under light-color-eyed contact lenses
learn to fetishize the size of their asses
and simultaneously hate their lips
my students thought Che Guevara was a rapper
from East Harlem
still think my Mumia t-shirt is of Bob Marley
how can literacy not include Phyllis Wheatley?
schools were built in the shadows of ghosts
filtered through incest and grinding teeth
molded under veils of extravagant ritual
“Carlos, what’s genocide?”
“Roselyn, how old was she? Cuántos años tuvo tu madre cuando se murió?”
“My mother had 32 years when she died. Ella era bellísima.”
…what’s genocide?
they’ve moved from sterilizing “Boriqua” women
injecting indigenous sisters with Hepatitis B,
now they just kill mothers with silent poison
stain their loyalty and love into veins and suffocate them
…what’s genocide?
Ridwan’s father hung himself
in the box because he thought his son
was ashamed of him
…what’s genocide?
Maureen’s mother gave her
skin lightening cream
the day before she started the 6th grade
…what’s genocide?
she carves straight lines into her
beautiful brown thighs so she can remember
what it feels like to heal
…what’s genocide?
…what’s genocide?
“Carlos, what’s genocide?”
“Luz, this…
this right here…
is genocide.”

I Feel in love with this poem a year ago and been in love with it ever since…So im sharing this Carlos Andres Romez’s classic with y’all

“The Black woman is the most unprotected, unloved woman on earth…she is the only flower on earth…that grows unwatered.” — Kola Boof, Egyptian-Sudanese-American novelist and poet (viachelebelleslair)
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“The Black woman is the most unprotected, unloved woman on earth…she is the only flower on earth…that grows unwatered.”
—
Kola Boof, Egyptian-Sudanese-American novelist and poet (viachelebelleslair)

africaisdonesuffering: Identity Crisis I use to be able to easily say that I identified with being African more than I could to being black in America. But how could I identify with Congo more than America when I only lived in the country just four years? I argued, well because I ate the food, I spoke the language and my ndombolo was on point. Then there was a period of time where I got criticized by other Africans for, “acting too black and American” and from other Congolese on my “American accent.” So then at that time I would have said that I identified with being Black-American more. Again, I argued, I could cuss like them; sing the black national anthem and crip walk down my middle school hallway. My home experience was a whirlwind of trying to maintain Congolese customs and trying to assimilate to whatever the American culture was—which changed when I was with other brown people and then again when I was with vanilla people. Either I was Black-American or I was an African immigrant in America. But for some reason I always felt like I couldn’t be both simultaneously. I always felt like I had to choose for some reason—thinking that we were so different that I had to be one or the other. As silly as it seems, I thought I either had to like french fries or fufu; Teddy Pendergrass or Koffi Olomide; Chinese fried rice or jollof rice. It was always a coin toss in my mind and it use to drive me crazy. I was jumping back and forth depending on the crowd because I didn’t want to feel like I was denying one side. Read More
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africaisdonesuffering:

Identity Crisis

I use to be able to easily say that I identified with being African more than I could to being black in America. But how could I identify with Congo more than America when I only lived in the country just four years? I argued, well because I ate the food, I spoke the language and my ndombolo was on point.

Then there was a period of time where I got criticized by other Africans for, “acting too black and American” and from other Congolese on my “American accent.” So then at that time I would have said that I identified with being Black-American more. Again, I argued, I could cuss like them; sing the black national anthem and crip walk down my middle school hallway.

My home experience was a whirlwind of trying to maintain Congolese customs and trying to assimilate to whatever the American culture was—which changed when I was with other brown people and then again when I was with vanilla people. Either I was Black-American or I was an African immigrant in America. But for some reason I always felt like I couldn’t be both simultaneously. I always felt like I had to choose for some reason—thinking that we were so different that I had to be one or the other. As silly as it seems, I thought I either had to like french fries or fufu; Teddy Pendergrass or Koffi Olomide; Chinese fried rice or jollof rice. It was always a coin toss in my mind and it use to drive me crazy. I was jumping back and forth depending on the crowd because I didn’t want to feel like I was denying one side.

Read More

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