Everyday I work at killing the White Man. It’s not easy, and he still refuses to die, but everyday I work at it.
I didn’t notice when he grew there. I wasn’t born with him. He wasn’t genetically encoded by my European ancestors. No, he was a virus. When society began to form my mind…began to pull and prod and twist my thoughts in its different soulless directions, that was when the virus was planted and the White Man grew.
He came from movies, T.V. shows, wisps of adult conversations, and even kids’ cartoons. He came when, in grade one, Sandy Dingleberry told a story of the horrible things that could happen when a ‘black’ man marries a ‘white’ woman. I learned quickly that Sandy was a liar, but the disease had already touched me in her words. Disease is like that.
He came when someone at sometime taught me “Eenie meenie minie mo” and that word came out of my mouth before I knew what it was. When I discovered the meaning, it was too late. That word had already crossed my tongue. Never saying it again could not change the fact that it was said. In finding a way to grow, the White Man will use all sorts of trickery.
It was my mother who helped save me somewhat from the White Man. She said, “I am a Negro; I am an Indian.” She was deep in White Man territory, and the people around her didn’t like what she said, but she would not be silenced. She kept saying “I am a Negro; I am an Indian” regardless of how they treated her.
Unfortunately, she could not completely kill the White Man that had infected me, but she crippled him. She left him without legs or arms or a voice, but I still hear him breathe, and everyday I try to kill him.
I see him everywhere. Not just on the inside. I see him on the outside too. The White Man is in everyone. That’s what a virus is. It doesn’t discriminate. It just invades. The symptoms may vary according to a person’s situation, but that’s him…that’s the defiling White Man…defiling humanity every chance he gets.
In some the White Man is strong. You can tell by the way they defend him…protect him…embrace him. In others he is a wasted mess, clinging to life, but if you don’t admit he’s there, you can’t kill him, and he’ll keep on breathing his diseased breath into your mind. You have to see him to destroy him completely.
I have a dream that one day, I will finally get him. I will at last hit him in just the right spot, and he will be dead…gone…obliterated from my mind. After that, I will then become the antidote. Every breath I expel out into this world will be filled with White Man antibodies, and then as the wind carries these antibodies to every corner of this planet, eventually everyone in the world will breathe them in. When that happens, he will finally be destroyed, and we will all learn how glorious and wonderful it is to be alive and free at last of the White Man’s tyranny.
