Total War
Let's workshop this poem about a beautiful and powerful teacher in the throes of "dismantling his-story," her confident blaccent making everything she says seem indubitable
Total War
Hammering into young black minds how victimized they are by the white meat always dangled in their faces (almost as if to make their rage grow to righteous extremes of curb-stomping relentlessness), the teacher asks the class “What’s the longest war in history?” and—after shooting down with a mere stare the first answer of the one eager white kid (“Is it the Korean War since no peace treaty was signed?”) and then the second answer (“It must be the Afghan Conflict if you’re looking for continuous fighting”)—she states the right answer with a teary look in every student’s eyes, except the eyes of that one deflated white kid (who has proven “reluctant,” as she wrote in his report card, “to dissociate from or express even the least bit of shame about whiteness”): “The war against black people.”
As if civil war were somehow our secret thanatos wish (or as if there were somehow a good deal of money in nation-splitting division), the same teacher right afterwards says, perhaps sensing incredulity from some of the precocious white students and budding oreo black students, “finally this total war against black people—no means of attack off the table—is being recognized in the larger culture” and then pulls up the trailer for the new film The American Society of Magical Negroes, which includes the following bit of dialogue between two black men—dialogue that (1) stands in flagrant contradiction to the poverty and crime and neighborhood-degradation statistics and (2) would never fly (culturally, or even perhaps legally) if white was swapped with any other race.
“What’s the most dangerous animal on the planet?”
“The shark—.”
“White people, when they feel uncomfortable. White people feeling uncomfortable precedes a lot of bad stuff for us. That’s why we fight white discomfort everyday. Because the happier they are, the safer we are.”
