What Shall I Tell My Children Who Are Black - A Poem

By Dr Margaret Burroughs
What shall I tell my children who are black
Of what it means to be a captive in this dark skin?
What shall I tell my dear one, fruit of my womb,
of how beautiful they are when everywhere they turn
they are faced with abhorrence of everything that is black.
The night is black and so is the boogyman.
Villains are black with black hearts.
A black cow gives no milk. A black hen lays no eggs.
Storm clouds, black, black is evil
and evil is black and devil's food is black...
What shall I tell my dear ones raised in a white world
A place where white has been made to represent
all that is good and pure and fine and decent,
where clouds are white and dolls, and heaven
surely is a white, white place with angels
robed in white, and cotton candy and ice cream
and milk and ruffled Sunday dresses
and dream houses and long sleek cadilacs
and Angel's food is white... all, all... white.
What can I say therefore, when my child
Comes home in tears because a playmate
Has called him black, big lipped, flatnosed and nappy headed?
What will he think when I dry his tears and whisper,
"Yes, that's true. But no less beautiful and dear."
How shall I lift up his head, get him to square
his shoulders, look his adversaries in the eye,
confident in the knowledge of his worth.
Serene under his sable skin and proud of his own beauty?
What can I do to give him strength
That he may come through life's adversities
As a whole human being unwarped and human in a world
Of biased laws and inhuman practices, that he might
Survive. And survive he must! For who knows?
Perhaps this black child here bears the genius
To discover the cure for... cancer
Or to chart the course for exploration of the universe.
So, he must survive for the the good of all humanity.
He must and will survive.
I have drunk deeply of late from the fountain
of my black culture, sat at the knee of and learned
from mother Africa, discovered the truth of my heritage.
The truth, so often obscured and omitted.
And I find I have much to say to my black children.
I will lift up their heads in proud blackness
with the story of their fathers and their father's fathers.
And I shall take them into a way back time
of kings and queens who ruled the Nile,
and measured the stars and discovered the laws of mathematics.
I will tell them of a black people upon whose backs have been built
the wealth of three continents.
I will tell him this and more.
And knowledge of his heritage shall be his weapon and his armor;
It will make him strong enough to win any battle he may face.
And since this story is so often obscured,
I must sacrifice to find it for my children,
even as I sacrifice to feed, clothe and shelter them.
So this I will do for them if I love them.
None will do it for me.
I must find the truth of heritage for myself and pass it on to them.
In years to come, I believe because I have armed them with the truth,
my children and their children's children will venerate me.
For it is the truth that will make us free!

Dr. Margaret Burroughs founded of the DuSable Museum of African American History and Art in Chicago, IL, the first Black museum in the United States


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Why – Chapter 1 - A Lament

Why – Chapter 1
(A Lament by Ro Broaddus)

Was it that lie I told?
Was it my impure thought?
Did my words need more contemplation before they leapt from my depths?
For You’ve chosen me, Lord.
Perhaps my sacrifice is for the benefit of my generations.
Ultimately? I’m unsure.
But I’m clawing my way through Your jungles,
And treading my way through Your quicksand.
I try shielding myself from the storm cloud,
And dodging the bullets from Your strife-laden rifle,
But to no avail.
Memories are daggers, struggles – Your television.
Now my body is tired.
My soul is full,
My spirit exhausted.
My future is hazy,
My world, a maze.
At one turn death excites me,
At another, a glimmer of a sliver of light escapes the cracks of my psyche.
Lord, I’m now at the end of Your leash,
Waiting for You to guide me.
I must accept the rain,
For without rain, there is no growth,
And without growth there is no life.
I had convinced me that You were a sham,
Then You let me live.


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Loving Jesus People

Christians have a bad reputation with folks
Sadly, much of it well-deserved
Earned with our hate and condemnation
Bought with our self-righteousness

Reducing our faith to catchy slogans
Political movements, and poor cliches
Forgetting how we’re to treat the least of these,
the poor, the children, the widows.

I blame my dilemma on Him, you know.
This Jesus I’ve chosen to follow.
He had to go ruin things with His talk of
“Love your neighbor as yourself”
“Love your enemies”
Who needs that sort of pressure?
Doesn’t He know how annoying some people are?
I’ve got a list of annoying people
(many of them His).

He ate with the “sinners” of his day–
Tax collectors and prostitutes–
Making Himself available to everyone.
But this is a question that I have to ask:
Would Jesus have lunch with George Bush?

All people were created in God’s image.
All deserving of respect, and love?
God’s standards aren’t very high.

I guess it’s not Him that I have the problem with.
Mostly the people who act in His name.
Using Him like a stamp of approval.
Justifying war in Jesus’ name.

As the world around us grows more desperate
We live in a community of shared loss
and hope.

We forget what we’re about
We’re more than agendas and dogmas
We're joined in our humanity, our weakness
What we have in common.

We’re all Jesus people.
I guess that means that we’re stuck with each other.


(Obviously, I have been reading a lot of Ann LaMotte. I just couldn't get her language and words out of my head.)

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