Lo siento...por ti

Why is it that we are complacent in a society where we have been socially constructed to accept "Better late than never" as the normal response for gov't phuck ups and their delayed reactions/responses/etc. Then to make matters worse, WE’VE internalized this message and use it to justify our own shortcomings...towards ourselves as well as others.

I guess it's the readings in school, my return back to the city, shit, it could just be me realizing there's only 2 days left in Black History Month that's got me on edge. But damn... Better late than never??????????????

Naw…u gotta come better than that

tell that to the people who were in the Superdome, Convention Center, under their refrigerator in their flooded homes, left in the nursing homes, hospitals, the 9th wd, tell that to the bodies that'll never be found floating in the Mississippi, tell it to that motherless children that are walking around

lost.

While in Costa Rica, I came up with a saying "Lo siento...por ti" translated "I'm sorry...for you (if that’s the way You feel). I'm coming across as "the angry Black woman" right now...and that's cool with me...I AM. I'm tired of the lies and bullshitting that's been going on about my city, even though I tend to sometimes perpetuate em...the truth hurts. Someone asked me about the city the other day and I said, "It's coming along" I had to return to that person 5 minutes later to tell him the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I heart The Boondocks, and one of my favorite episodes is The Return of the King. The most profound quote from that show was when Huey told MLK that he needed to tell people the truth...and not the pretty truth. the ugly truth that makes people angry and makes them get out and do something (i am sooo paraphrasing).

The truth huh?!?!?!?

Let me say Lo siento...por ti, if you feel that every one of my blogs focuses on the dark side, lack of recovery and negative aspects of New Orleans...that's what I'm living...Everyday!!!!

But let me also say that if I didn't feel I could make a change, I wouldn't be back here...in New Orleans. But in order to rebuild, we must continue to reveal the harsh realities of racism and classism that Katrina exposed. That's hard...especially when some people think racism is a thing of the black & white pre-technicolor "I have a dream" past, not linking it to the prison industrial complex that is overrepresented by Blacks and Browns especially when Blacks, Browns and whites commit crimes in proportion to their population, or that toxic sites are in majority Black/minority neighborhoods, or when a War on Poverty systematically criminalizes people who have been shut out of the work force due to the deindustrialization, or the outsourcing of jobs etc...just to name of a few of the ways that the prejudice and racism of the jim/jane crow era has reinvented itself to the institutionalized racism of today.