I never knew you before, but as soon as I opened the door, I felt ‘a
tinge of difference’. I felt an unconscious attack, as my psychical
pain interprets, ‘is it because I am black’? I don’t know where that
feeling came from, but it seems so long ago my parents came to know,
the same thing, if you know what I mean.

It’s a strange feeling in my gut, which gets me into a rut, that you
have some kind of hold on “me” and I just need to be set free.

I am puzzled about this difference between “you” and “me” or is it
something of an image that just “I” can see?

In all the years that I overheard my parents speak, I am thinking did
they freak me out. The times they debated about discrimination, in our
nation, did someone forget that you might be my relation?

I often think what is going on ‘inside me’. Why can I see an image of
a chain and why can I see a noose? I sometimes feel for someone to let
me loose.

Is not black the opposite to white? Or white the opposite to black?
Then, why am I experiencing this internal fight?

Who decides what type of black slavery is wrong or right, anyway?

When someone brought me from my motherland, married me and forced me to
live like a slave. Was that black slavery?

When someone married me in a foreign land and beat me daily, like a
dog, into submission, to know my place. Was that black slavery?

When someone left me in my motherland, because they had to find the
land of milk and honey, flowing with money, whilst I perished in the
hands of my substitute carer. Was that black slavery?

When someone left me on my own, when I was a child, to drag myself up,
when they went to work, whilst my substitute carer abused me. Was that
black slavery?

When someone foreign says or does something that I do not like. Is
that black slavery?

When I mull over primitive negative thoughts, that I adopted from
someone else and punish myself for no apparent reason? Is that black
slavery?

In it’s ‘modern context’, what is the right perception of black
slavery, anyway? Because I have tasted many of those kind of
experiences before and I know I certainly don’t want no more.

In my opinion, ‘black slavery’ in its modern context means any type of
oppression on “me” by my oppressor, for you see, I seek to flee every
day, living in a world which dictates mankind has to pay, at times in
an unloving way.
ASo when I was listening as a child to ‘someone else’, were there other
things that I wasn’t aware of about black slavery?

Did I miss that bit, that it can come in different forms? That when I
become an adult it would bear it’s hallmark in something someone did or
said, that made me feel that ‘tinge of difference’, of being black or
white or white or black – opposite to “you”, and guilty of being just
“me” entangled in primitive unorganised thoughts of black slavery?

For all that belongs to darkness is slavery, black or white, white or
black and I know the significance now when I feel this attack. That it
is evidence and it is real, for how else could my conscious stir up
this feeling of black slavery?

Copyright © Jennifer Hooper 2008