INTERNALIZED OPPRESSION: FROM VICTIM TO VILLAIN (2023)

Have you ever considered
you who call yourselves ”nigga”
how much you think like those who enslaved you?
You’ve become willing cattle
better yet chattel
your oppressor’s views now engraved in you…

Way back when
to break slave men
it took whips hounds and torture,
Now you need no instructions
you’re voluntarily constructing
your own mental slavery just like they brought ya…

Into
when they sent you
across an ocean in ships’ holds and binds,
So now you behave
like voluntary slaves
actually worse – like you’ve lost your minds!

Think on this
it was the urge to get rich
that drove the whole slavery enterprise,
And all the racist tripe
was just empty hype
to make using us for free labor seem justified.

It was our power to labor
that they savored
cuz it’s labor that generates wealth,
We produced cash crops
then worked in sweat shops
without regard for our needs or health.

Again it was all about money
creating milk and honey
for capitalists, we were their source of production,
While calling us worthless
bent on hurting us
if we defied their instructions.

So now today
we see ourselves this way
hating the very skin we wear,
At Blacks we project violence
at whites respect and silence
our women even reject their own hair.

We’re only too willing
ourselves we’re killing
at any imagined offense,
We generate
higher Black casualty rates
than the Klan ever did, have we no sense?

Worse still we take pride
in high rates of homicide
in the neighborhoods where we rest,
Who else
sees killing off themself
as some game or contest.

We pack gats
Acting like sewer rats
Killing each other for sport,
Loved ones prone to die
just for stepping outside
cuz we’ve been taught not to support…

Our own people
to love as equals
our communities and their residents,
Cuz like the slavers
we don’t favor
Black life over dead presidents.

When we see
those who are free
to bask in wealth power and fame,
We come to believe
we must perceive
things like them and act just the same.

Their model of manhood
the evils they call good
become the things we desire,
This urge to possess
is a subconscious process
of coming to believe in a liar.

Like the syndrome
revealed in Stockholm
the oppressed identify with their oppressor,
Lose the ability to see
what it means to be free
so they accept the role of the lesser.

To admire the features
of this sinister creature
embracing his lies and lessons,
That power’s seat
lies at his feet
bowing before his throne of oppression.

So you now accept the role
selling your soul
rejecting the features of your own face,
Now you hate your own
want to mount the throne
to assume your oppressor’s place.

By Kevin Rashid Johnson