Something I have realized for a pretty good while now is that a good lot of people just have no common sense and put way too much emphasis on the negative. I’ve been hearing lately about a seven year old black girl by the name of Autum Ashante, who is a budding poet. Actually, she has been descrived as a prodigy. I wouldn’t know, I am not familiar with her poetry, having only heard snippets here and there, and I probably wouldn’t be that good a judge anyway. So I will take the word that seems to be the general consensus, she is very good, especially for someone her age. And according to her father, whom it has been suggested has actually written her poetry, she wrote it herself. I will likewise take his word for that.
The problem is, her work is controversial, and seems to be at least heavily influenced by her father, a former Black Panther member. It is laced with what has been described as racist overtones, in fact it is said to be overtly racist. She seems to be, in addition to a poet, a budding black nationalist. And boy, are some people pissed. People have even threatened her. On one blog, it was intimated that she might well be “shut up”.
These kind of people come in three categories. There are the kind of people that will rant about this little girl while standing up for Lynx and Lamb Gaede. There are the kind of people that will stand up for Autum while criticising Lynx and lamb Gaede in the hatefullest terms imagineable. These two are the kind that you would commonly call “hypocrits”.
But these two are actually laughable when compared to the third kind, the most dangerous kind of all, the kind that think they get a vote on what any and every other human being thinks, writes, says, and feels. And they seem to be more strident about the children than they seem to have the guts to be to an adult that has much more of an ability to put them in their sorry places.
After all, you people that seem to think you have this moral authority are the ones that should put them in their places, right? Not the other way around, by any stretch. You just can’t cotton to anybody expressing pride in their heritage, whether that be White, Black, Latino, Jewish, or whatever. After all, you might disrupt the great American melting pot, and we can’t have that. To a bigot, any appreciation of racial culture and heritage is itself an invitation to the fostering and encouragment of bigotry, so it must be nipped in the bud. Never mind that this little girl is just now developing her talent, and has a long way to go, and who knows where it might eventually take her as long as it is allowed to blossom and thrive. If you don’t like the road she seems to be on at this exact moment,then you had better intevene. You know what’s fucking best for her, don’t you?
Answer: no, you fucking don’t. Her talent, whatever it is, should evolve to where it will, with guidance from her father, and from all the other influences she should come upon through her formative years, in a natural way. Not a forced, browbeaten one. You don’t like what she has to say? Then don’t listen.
Otherwise, if you are in an auditorium, and you hear her tell the black people to stand for the “Black Pledge”, and she then tells all the white people they should not stand but remain seated, keep your white honky fucking asses seated like she says, listen to the poem, listen politely, and applaud in appreciation of her talent, like you have some fucking sense. You might find that this will go a hell of a lot farther to giving her a better impression of white people in general than all the whining, moaning, bitching, and agonizing that’s been going on the past few weeks will ever hope to accomplish.
Oh, and by the way-since many of you people seem to have forgotten, let me be the first to remind you. When you encourage multi-culturalism, like some of you are so wont to do, you should know by now that you may not always like the manner in which it might manifest itself, whether that might be in the form of a White Racialist girls band, or as an African American Seperatist poet child prodigy.
