A Message for Some Young Brothers Who Have Got Some Serious Thinking to Do
A Poem by Ernie McCray
I’d like to say this to you
young brothers
who’re backing Donald J. Trump:
you’ve got some serious thinking to do,
especially about that point-of-view
you have that we African Americans
have nothing to gain
through politics.
Because, to tell you the truth,
if it wasn’t for the ballot box
in voting booths,
we wouldn’t have had a chance
to grab ahold of anything
in this country
anywhere near our due,
as this society has never ever,
even for a moment in time,
given us a single thing
that we didn’t fight for mightily,
and the struggle goes on
and we don’t need you out here
standing behind a man
who has lost his mind,
a man who has never
cared about us
at any time,
a man who would
just as soon have us,
in a sense,
riding, once again, at the back of the bus.
Hey,
the law had to make him
rent to us.
He owned casinos
that weren’t the least bit
welcoming to us.
He’s a disgusting cuss
who uses terms like
animalistic and lazy
to describe us.
He cuddles up
to White supremacists
who are threatening to us.
He whined and moaned
and made a big fuss
when the first one of us
sought the presidency,
claiming that he wasn’t
born in the country,
that, in that respect,
he wasn’t one of us…
And, there’s nobody
he’s been more hateful towards
or hostile to
than the younger ones among us,
as, back in the late 80’s
there were some teenagers who
were accused
of attacking and raping a jogger
in New York,
in Central Park,
something they didn’t do,
and your boy
took out ads in Big Apple dailies
demanding that the death penalty
be reinstated
so these young soul brothers
could either
fry in an electric chair
or get shot up with a lethal injection.
And you want to help this man
win an election?
If you really do,
you truly do
have some serious thinking to do
because your people
and all of humanity
need you
to play an active role
in not letting him become president –
ever again.
Think of it as keeping alive
the fighting spirit
our ancestors
set in motion
from the moment
they landed on these shores,
launching the first steps
in the direction of our desire to live free.
So, get it together
my young brothers
as the victory hasn’t
been won.
You’re the generation
in our journey
that’s been called on to
save a democracy
so we and everybody else can
keep on keeping on
and pass the baton on
to future generations
in their quest for a better country,
a better world.
And the sooner you get started the better.
Ernie McCray is an activist for love and peace who acts and sings and writes both poetry and prose, a man who rises each day to do whatever he can, no matter how small or grand, to make the world better in some way.
Unapologetically.