I Often Wonder

Reading the Emancipation Proclamation, By Henry Louis Stephens (1824–1882) — Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZC4–2442 (color film copy transparency), uncompressed archival TIFF version (4 MiB), level color (pick white & black points), cropped, and converted to JPEG (quality level 88) with the GIMP 2.2.13, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5336802

I often wonder that, if I lived at any time during the period of slavery in the U.S., would I have felt the same about racism and slavery as I feel now. Would I have been willing to die for the freedom of slaves?

I often wonder that, if I lived at any time during Jim Crow in the U.S. would I have felt the same way about racism and “Separate but Equal?” Would I have faced the water cannons, the beatings, the hangings and been willing to die for total equality?

I often wonder that, if my skin were not white, would I have been willing to live as a Black person? How I would deal with being profiled and murdered by hateful and institutional racism? Would I be angry enough to march? Would I hate white people, the police? Would I honor the plight of my ancestors, their unwilling sacrifice just to live, to exist?

I often wonder that, if I were a Black Person, an African American, how could I write this? What words would I would use? Or, how would I feel about the white person who wrote this poem?

Patsy, 2017