Poetic Tongues
by Fabu
Reflections of Barack

     Waiting on hope, I stood outside for two hours in Wisconsin snow with frozen feet. I listened to people’s intimate conversations because we were just
that close and I could not help hearing. I felt the press of White people all around me and I felt fine. I could only see African Americans from a distant
and I did not panic. I saw other folks of color barely visible against all of the White, and that was okay. I was one of thousands and no fear gripped me,
even as the thousands pressed forward. I let myself be carried then I walked and walked up stairs, finally arriving at the very tiptop. There
was no place to rest but at the very top for me, a woman who doesn’t really like heights.
    This night, I was a woman waiting on hope. I was waiting to hear hope. I was waiting to feel hope. I wanted to believe in hope again in my heart, in
my city, in my state, in my country and most importantly, I wanted to be a part of hope as an American citizen. Then Barak Obama came to the
podium and hope was in his mouth. I didn’t have to wait one moment longer. I am an African American woman. That sentence alone speaks loudly in
a country where I have always been boxed into race and gender as if both were evil. I share the bottom of this society along with African American
men and everyone, including the newly arrived in America, who have more opportunity and are welcomed better than us. For example, when
ethnicities come from abroad to the U.S. and are hated and called dirty names, it only lasts for a while before they blend in and became
a part of the elite majority. We never blend in because of the richness of our skins. As the first generation of children integrated into White schools in
the south, I have never felt safe around unknown White people, let alone thousands of them. As a southerner, I work hard to avoid the cold and don’t
often stay out on freezing winter nights. Whenever I enter a place, I look first to see who is like me. I scan a room for color because the color black
means a modicum of safety for me while white is the unknown. The unknown can be dangerous and I never forget that ever! Gender can comfort me in
outnumbered situations, only if it belongs to a woman of color. White women have betrayed me again and again historically and when I was young,
they betrayed me personally. In White women’s “herstory” there have been far and few examples of standing with African American women against
oppression. Who remembers that Fredrick Douglass advocated for the abolition of slavery and the right of women to vote?
    And yes, I have friends from many ethnicities. As I matured, I learned how to sift and test the unknown. I learned that integrity is what I look for
behind every color. When I was young and vulnerable, I had so many White teachers that spoke one way while they were teaching in our
predominantly Black school, but when I met them in other places they were White first. When I was at The University of Memphis and there were
exactly three of us in a history class, the White woman teacher called us “nigras” which is the more polite southern word for the “n” word. I stood and
challenged her. I told her many things about her language, attitude and racism. I threatened to go to the Dean with my complaint. (Completely unsure
that the White male Dean of history would do a thing.) I took my “A” from her class because I was smart and brave, not because she was fair or gave it to
me or even wanted me to succeed emotionally or academically. Yet in all of these clashes, the constant bombardment from racism takes a toll on my
heart and my spirit. My life as a child traveling the world with my parents and my life in the south growing with my family while my
father was in Viet Nam, forged my exterior into steel, while I begged the good God to keep my heart tender. I only heard myself referred to as American
when we lived outside of the U.S., in France. It was only on military bases that the threat of war put even the slightest dent in White privilege.
    My life as an African American woman made me travel to the Kohl Center where I stood cold, feet frozen, amongst mostly young White people to
hear hope in this country revived again. We live in the state of Wisconsin where if you are a White third grader, your reading scores are second in the
nation but if you are a Black third grader, your reading scores are at the bottom — 50th in the nation. It reminds me of how carefully I watched my son
and his friends in third grade at Lincoln elementary. I knew the research that African American children decide in the third grade if they are going to
be successful in school or not. Their bodies remain but their spirits fly out the window. I remember the children who didn’t make it into productive lives.
I know the current research that Afrian American children don’t stop learning just because of poor households because those from middle class and
upper class homes are not reaching their potential in Madison schools either. I know the statistics that third grade reading scores are used as a marker
for building more prisons. We live in the state of Wisconsin, which leads the 50 states in the incarceration of young African American men. Wisconsin
beats the Deep South in incarceration, yet it comes nowhere near the same percentage in African American population. It is important that Barack
Obama wins this state.
    Barack Obama, President of the United States. I am completely honest in writing that I never thought that I’d live to see his success. I wished that
my parents, 1960’s freedom fighters, could have lived to see and hear Barack Obama too. A bit of hope began in my heart that this community
organizer with his brilliant mind, this multiracial human being representing the new America, this international, global person with roots in Kenya, this
politician with a proven record of integrity and who is not a slave to the “Washington DC” political machine, this mature man who needs our wisdom
and support, this Barack Obama will unite this country for our good here and in our shared world. I was at Barack Obama’s Madison rally believing that I
really am an American with rights and that other Americans who are people of color, who are White, male and female, young and old, rich and poor,
believe in hope too.