Bedfollowed hopes,
Sweet nothings whispered
Into covered ears,
Contemplated by closed minds.
Softly spoken lies,
Hidden behind
Harsh truths,
Told in the language
Of the unheard,
The status quo undisturbed.
We, the people, have been lied to. On the backs of the Negro proletariat, the American nation was built. The American plantation was the sacred ground where many hopes were lost and lives were stolen. It is the place where the hearts and minds of Black Americans were broken. We, the hulking mass of the Negro proletariat, have been lied to. There would be no capitalism without Black bodies as the original capital. Slavery was the foundation of the American economy and the means by which it became the richest country in the world. Without chattel slavery, there would be no American exceptionalism.
The body keeps the score,
This game played
To keep Black bodies on
Society’s hegemonic floor—
Broken hearts and minds,
The result of trauma
The likes of which
Have never been seen before.
Buried hopes,
Deep beneath the core.
The game continues to be played
As the body keeps the score.
“Here, then, awaiting our study, lies man’s authentic ‘being’—stretching the whole length of the past. Man is what has happened to him, what he has done. Other things might have happened to him or have been done by him; this constitutes a relentless trajectory of experience that he carries on his back as the vagabond carries his bundle and all he possesses.”
The Black American with a lineage tracing back to chattel slavery is the sole beneficiary of America’s pain, which has yet to find peace because it refuses to be acknowledged. We, the hulking mass of the Negro proletariat, are the past, present, and future of this great nation, where the truths held to be self-evident are hidden behind a multitude of lies. Chief among them is the claim that we are not deserving of recompense for the pain our ancestors experienced. This same pain, which shapes our very existence on this iteration of the American plantation—also known as sacred ground.
Below the Mason-Dixon Line
Lies a truth that is whispered
Loudly,
With force,
By those without power,
In the language of the unheard,
Unseen—
In mass graves,
Undisturbed,
Below the lines of the Mason-Dixon.
Kaufmann, W. A. (1957). Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre.
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