ALMOST 9 MINUTES

(REMEMBERING MEMORIAL DAY 2020)

By Michael Whitman

 

What is it I am watching?

I have been here before!

I look away the third time they show the scene.

 

“I have a dream.”

 

I am a white man,

Grew up in a segregated society,

Not knowing it.

 

“I have a dream.”

 

What is it I am watching,

Outside of – protected from –

Only an observer of?

 

“I have a dream.”

 

I am privileged,

Inside of – apart of –

Unconscious to.

 

“I have a dream.”

 

I hear all humanity is created equal,

With inalienable rights.

Until…

 

“I have a dream.”

 

You are a white person,

With Manifest Destiny,

And an African slave at your beck and call.

 

“I have a dream.”

 

I am a white man.

I have privilege.

I am blind.

 

“I have a dream.”

 

I see looting.

I do not hear the louder question.

Why can’t he breathe?

 

“I have a dream.”

 

Whose knee is on his neck?

Why is that 14 year old dead black boy’s

Face beaten unrecognizable?

 

“I have a dream.”

 

Why was Black Wall Street

Burnt to the ground in 1921?

Why, during World War II,

The incarceration of United States citizens

Of Japanese ancestry?

Why the Trail of Tears?

Why nearly two million Mexican and Latino citizens

“Repatriated” in 1936?

Why are Jews and Muslims shot while worshiping?

And gay men,

And transgendered black women,

Beaten to death?

 

Where is the justice in any of this?

And where, after it happens?

While –

I only see the looting.

 

“I have a dream.”

 

I am a white man.

I have privilege.

I am blind.

I only see the looting.

I can’t breathe.

I see only the looting.

The looting.

I cannot breathe.

I am a white man.

 

“I have a dream.”

 

I look again at the TV screen.

The scene is the same.

I will not turn away.

 

“I have a dream.”

 

I see my face in the man with the knee.

I see my face in the man beneath it,

And another Face, bloodied and battered.

I have a dream!