Simon Says

Hands Up, hands down, wrong side of town, lounging around, laying down, dragged & scuffed across the ground; it doesn't matter, you are likely to be put down - - that is, choked, tased, maimed or shot, even after you are lying face down.  Leaving that most precious fluid Jackson Pollock rendered as a signature trail ~ on the improvised canvases of sidewalks, streets and grass ~ that you were there; knowing that the next pair of hands on your person is more likely distal extensions of the Coroner, rather than an EMT or an ER Doctor.  

Why . . .?  You failed to hear, comply or respond exactly to what “Simon says”  . . . because by the time you interpret what Simon said, puts the command in the past tense, which means, your response was other than immediate, and, invariably - this translates into lack of compliance, which somehow equals belligerence. This means, you are resisting arrest or a threat to Simon.  

Now you are classified as a “COMBATANT,” and that means WAR! The anthropological cultural default protocol kicks in, and is automatically uploaded into RAM or the micro-cortex of a barbarian with a badge.  Darker skin trumps human acknowledgement, and reduces you to an inhuman creature or animal with characteristics like the “Hulk or Thing,” all because, society sanctions the marginalization & dehumanization of males of color.

Simon, Hebrew in origin – meaning to hear or to be heard, even if you have a hearing impairment or in a heightened state of arousal, because you view “authorities” in uniform proximal to your person, friends or families, as potential threats, or dangerous, rather than someone to assist or give aid.

It's a DAMN SHAME, that greater than 85% of all authorities in uniform, ideally are there to “protect & serve,” while that 15% who managed to receive a badge, and a gun - are HIGHLY questionable Officers of the law. And, those are the ones, I tell all Red, Brown & Black folk to AVOID & OBSERVE!  

Anyway, whose “Laws” are they enforcing in the first place? And, much like child’s play, whether you have high anxiety in the presence of police, they – police NEED to be immersed in training, built upon scenarios designed to instill second nature into their responsivity to males of color. The specific behavior sets to parallel their paranoid reactivity and or proclivity to point their firearms - like a spontaneous reaction to touching a hot burner on a stove.

Sure, it’s like ‘Child’s Play’, “My baad – I thought that cell phone was a gun.” Institutional Racism has given these enforcers, ‘License To Kill’ with impunity! A racist system has created a zeitgeist that allows our male children and young adolescents - to be viewed as vermin, alongside the road of poorly lite Texas highways.  Racist Amerika sired Simon from the loins of ‘Jim Crow – Uncle Sam’ who signed off on mobs placing strange over ripened fruit on trees in the South, which evoked pathological grins & smiles on the faces of dried out salty thin wafers of toasted flour denizens – aka – crackers!  . . . Oops, my baad ~

“Cicero dicit fac hoc” (Cicero says do this.) This demonic chant has become an expression to excuse the public maiming, and killing of our males, right before our eyes with the generic response of: ‘the subject failed to comply to a direct police command’. Now, that we are clear about what happens to us, when we give thought or pause to what “SIMON SAYS.”

I submit to you, that we should replace Simon Says, with “Mother (Captain, Father) May I?” Let’s choose a much better game for today’s world. This will allow us to have a call & response feedback loop, to document accountability & responsibility.  “May I? Yes you may – or No you may not.”  The lesson is, one has to embrace simplicity when dealing with a Racist – one-track mind. So, let the records state, RACISM is the child of ignorance, and for Simon, that’s too much POWER - to place in the hands of one - who deems self as Judge & Jury. Yes, RACISM is the child of IGNORANCE! What fool of mental myopia is only able to see - the illusory moment of power over Blackness, with hi-tech mobile phone cameras in a world married to technology? Can I get a witness? “Can we all just get along?”  So, if this is Martin’s dream – I am certain his Spirit recognizes it  ~ as a Nightmare!