Who I Am

Life is such that we no longer ask direct questions. We never really come out and expose our true selves, nor do we ask too much of others because we fear that we may be treading on emotional land mines. Instead, we ask enough questions to tease a hunger that is premature. When that hunger cries out for fulfillment, we have to half-fill it with our own perceptions. But this is never enough; for as humans, we limit our minds and visions to whatever we want to know, accept, and see, and exclude all else as irrelevant.

But you, you are an exception. We have just met and you blatantly ask: "WHO ARE YOU?" (UH-OH, it's time to put my guards up!) Somehow I am taken aback by your rather casual and plainspoken inquiry. Yet still, I refuse to dismiss this challenge. I have to let you know just: WHO I AM!

I am natural. I am one with nature. No chemical can cure my sickness; my restoratives grow in my backyard. My hair is of the same texture and beauty as it was at birth.

I am the succulent fruit that nurtures my divine's seed. I am the mother of a civilization. Many have been before me, but I could never be just another link in the chain. Without me, there would be no chain in which to link.

I am the chief warrior who successfully lead my people in battles against the imperialists who think we are "savages". I control armies and lead them into the emancipation that our enslavers want so desperately to take away.

I am the sole companion of the men who are brought from their homelands to a foreign country. While we toil on and plow strange lands from sun up to sun down, it is I who keep the vision of home omnipotent. I am the comfort zone to the man who has been physically and mentally separated from his family; his life; his self; beaten down until he is reduced to to a helpless child; corrupted with guns and intoxicants; all of which can destroy us all; if we let them.

I am the strong survivor of rape and pillage. And although I will always carry such a derogatory burden, my love for my children; male companions (who fail to understand my many and apparently ravenous needs/wants because they were taught not to); and for my people (including the culturally deprived, the mentally enslaved, and the mindful skeptics) abounds as my self-awareness increases.

And still today...

I am the student who sits in their classes, learning what they want me to know, nothing more, nothing less. It is up to me, therefore, to supplement the knowledge that they pass on to me with that of my own, which I acquire through independent study (that is, after I have omitted their fallacies). I am quite sure that you know a limited mind can only be an enslaved mind, don't you?

I am the entrepreneur who enters their business world. But my African clothing, gold-adorned nose, and locked hair (but open mind), does not comply with their rules of society. I have as much qualifications and more than they; but since they loathe my heritage out of ignorance, my credentials would never be recognized.

I am the parent who struggles to make ends meet. I am my children's father as well as their mother. I am their protector as well as their comforter. I am their educator as well as their friend. With such family structure, we could never be a broken home.

I am the backbone of the many Black men and boys who are lynched, incarcerated, and become victims of their environment everyday. I am their last source of hope, their courage, their driving force. Without me, they have no strength; no motivation. Without them, I would have no use for my valley of fruit; no peace; lack the essence of their complement. Without them would be the successful elimination of our race.

Even though you question who I am, and you know all of these things, I doubt that they will admit to believing that I can be all this and more. You see, to society: I am a mere statistic who is strung out on drugs, miseducated, pregnant, infected with HIV, and is the cause of their high homicide rates.

But you know as well as I do that I am all that I claim to be, because whether past, present, or future, I am and always will be: A BLACK WOMBAN!!!

Now, aren't you happy that you asked?