As much as people think they know my name, they fall short of a real understanding. I walk among people, like myself in achievement, but I have never heard the word Aaron from there mouths. Instead, I hear whispers of an Animal that is lost from the zoo or stories how neighborhoods use to be a certain way. The fact, no one knows my name, is okay. Yet, when I express this to people they dont understand. They say ‘But Aaron(Nigger), your not like them, your different.’ Or ‘Aaron(NIgger), I want to know why I can’t organize Black men.’ If people really knew my name they would take the time to listen and respect my space. but its more than just me, its this world in general. Where assumptions are held to higher standards than the truth I speak about me. Echo Park does not know my name, so I sought South Central for a familiar face. Hope!
I walk around people, like myself, who share a similar trait at birth. But I have not heard the word ‘Aaron’ from there lips. I connect though the cell memory of my parents past and I hoped this would be enough to connect me to people who want to know my name. Yet, the unity of a rebellion in 1992 doesnt mean I would be accept too. And it’s naive of me to enter a place that Los Angeles has made into a de facto occupation. Yet, I was longing for something that I thought South Central could provide me. But I am still lonely and losing my mind slowly. Skin color isnt enough, unless the people around you have that insight also. What I realize is that Black people are still a colonized group of people, along with the Koreans, Armenians, Latin@s, and Whites. Everyone here, including me, is colonized by this mentality that accepts de facto segregation. No one questions why 90% of black people live in south LA nor do they ask ‘why the University of South California is trying to gentrify South Central’ Its Fucked!!!!
But there is hope! Paulo Freire explains peoples struggle, which is linked to South Central. “The struggle is possible only because dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed.”
As much as people say this is how things are, the fact so many people are fighting for change, means colonization will never be complete. People know deep down that there are at least possibilities, and with possibilities there is hope. This is not an Obama add but this man built a campain on this principle. But still, noone knows Barack Obama’s name. So lets rejoic!!!
James Baldwin helps me!!! This is a quote “and in exactly the same way the south imagines that it knows the negro, the north imagines that it has set him free. Both camps are deluded. human freedom is a complex, difficult-private-thing. If we can liken life, for a moment, to a furnace, then freedom is the fire which burns away illusion”
