"Two Sets of Notes" - M. K. Asante, Jr.

I find myself feeling

As if I am ‘pon the ground & ceiling,

In institutions that disengage from healing

Instead, they simply warp open wounds

& Entrap me in rooms

where I am consumed by hypocrisy

& It occurs to me:

Greek philosophers didn’t author their own philosophy

& The statues on campus be watchin’ me,

Washington . . . Jefferson . . . Williams,

Clockin’ me-

As if to say ‘time’s up’

But I don’t run laps on tracks

I run laps around the scholars of tomorrow

Because new schools of thought

Are merely out history borrowed

& They label me militant, and black national radical,

trying to put my learning process on sabbatical

I don’t apologize,

Instead, I spit truth into the whites of eyes infected by

white lies.

They even try to get me to see-

Their point of view from a brother that looks like me,

but that brother don’t-

walk like me

talk like me

or

act like me,

and that brother turned his head

when I asked if he was

black like me.

Mastering their thoughts

and forgetting our own

and we wonder why we always feel alone,

from the media to academia-

hanging brothers like coats

and in their schools. . . .

I always take two sets of notes,

one set to ace the test

and

one set I call the truth,

and when I find historical contradictions

I used the first set as proof-

proof that black youths’

mind are being-

polluted,

convoluted,

diluted,

not culturally rooted.

In anything

except the Western massacre

and most of us are scared of Africa,

we view our mother’s land

Through the eyes of David Hume and Immanuel Kant

well

Immanuel kan’t tell me anything about a land he’s never

seen

a land rich with history

beautiful kings and queens.

They’ll have you believe other wise

their history is built on high-rise lies

the pyramids were completed

before Greece or Rome were conceptualized,

then they’ll claim the Egyptians’ race was a mystery

you tell them to read Herodotus Book II of the histories

it cannot be any clearer. . . .

Black children

look in the mirror

you are the reflection of divinity

don’t let them fool you with selective memory

walk high, listen to the elder who spoke

Black Students,

Always take two sets of notes.