When I was a young boy, between the ages of 6 and 7 years old, I can remember an older relative that was like a grandmother, reciting a poem about a bird in a cage. When I returned home from staying with relatives in New Orleans during the school summer break, I would question my mother daily with the same question. I would say, "Mama, why is there a bird in a cage that won't stop singing?" I would continue with the interrogation by probing, "Why does Aunt Teadot always recite it to us kids when we can't read yet?" I always got the same response which was, "Boy, go outside and play, or go and bug your brother."
After living and surviving through six decades in Black skin, I finally came to a realisation why the caged bird never stops singing. It's incredible to believe that this poem was written in 1899 by the Paul Laurence Dunbar, an African American poet at the end of the nineteenth century. The name of the poem is called Sympathy. For many years I thought the name of the poem was Why the Caged Bird Sings. Dunbar wrote the poem to illustrate life of Black men and women struggling to survive in the 1800s. Interestingly enough, the ink used in writing the poem appears to still be wet as everything that was orchestrated and supported by the government in the past is still happening today and everyday of my life. If you are imprisoned in Black skin like myself and are truly Black inside and out, then you know the struggles of everyone in similar skin. For over a century, Black people have been fighting for justice and equality while others in a different coloured skin are fighting to maintain their privileges while holding on to a fake superiority complex they have been taught or forced to believe.
Just for a moment, imagine what it would be like for a bird to live their entire life in a cage with wings they will never be able to use to fly around and enjoy all the beauty around us. Now visualise a lion, tiger, gorrilla or elephant locked in a cage at a zoo struggling to figure out how to get back to their environment of being free. Yet many of us take our children to zoos to stare at wild animals. Is it just for our own amusement? Why do we visit such places while eating hot buttered popcorn, hotdogs, or cotton candy in front of the caged animals? This must be what it felt like in 1899 because it certainly feels that way to me in 2021. The cruelty of slavery in the United States is similar, if not identical to the cruelty of Jews locked away in German concentration camps. Even today, it angers me that a race of people could mistreat and abuse others, mostly for the fun of it.
Everyday I struggle to get through one of my favourite books called, Caste, by an amazing writer, Isabel Wilkerson. It's one of the most honest and painful books I have ever read and I simply can't put it down, although I do take mini breaks from it to digest the messages. There is a strong feeling of racial trauma immediately followed by the healing guidance that Wilkerson provides making me stronger and more powerful. It's a book that I highly recommend to everyone. I wished I would have created a reading group for discussions. An old friend in San Francisco has a reading group to discuss Caste, but I must get myself organised with the different time zones.
I have always been curious about the cruelty German Nazis used against the Jews. Many years ago I started researching Adolph Hitler and tried to find logic in his actions. Like many of you, I discovered no logic at all, just pure hatred for a group of people that were too successful, so they had to be punished and destroyed as a race. Hitler's ideological goals included territorial expansion, consolidation of a racially pure state, and elimination of the European Jews and other perceived enemies of Germany. Jews in the concentration camps were stripped of their identity and their names, being forced to accept names given to them by the Nazis. They worked as slaves, were starved, beaten and killed or many died from malnutrition. Wilkerson reviews similar instances during slavery in the United States. Slaves were also stripped of their identity, given names to be laugh at, raped, beaten to death, starved and sold off as property to the highest bidder. Most things if not everything was built by slaves or imprisoned Jews in both countries.
Like today, Blacks are charged with crimes and sent to prison, but the same crimes committed by whites receive less punishment or merely a slap on the wrist. Time after time, vicious murders are committed, unsurprisingly by police officers knowing they will never be charged with a crime, especially if they use the fake phrase, "I feared for my life," even while holding guns, tear gas and batons for beating heads. Recently, Internal New York Police Department (NYPD) revealed documents shedding light on the Strategic Response Group, or SRG, the heavily militarised police unit behind the crackdown on George Floyd protesters. The NYPD Goon Squad manual teaches police officers to violate protesters' right, especially if they are Black or people of colour. The old me would sit for days trying to understand how such a training guide was developed and implemented, but not today. Like everything else I am witnessing must be from the 1900s too. Today I am more concerned with punishing, eliminating and rebuilding a broken society, community and country. On a global platform, Blacks have always been under the control of the law, but not protected by the law.
If I had one wish it would be for Caste and similar books to be mandatory reading in every school for students and teachers. My preference would be for Caste to be read in every home so that a miseducated population of people that continue to teach and spread lies and untrue facts can become better informed. Facing the truth is the only way to deal with the impact of racial trauma. Regardless of the colour of our skin, we have all been traumatised, but we must face it and deal with it in order to heal successfully. I am convinced that it will never happen in my life time, although I keep hoping to be surprised.
Pulitzer prize winner Isabel Wilkerson, shared a review called, Caste: The Lies That Divide Us where she shared, "Race is the language in which Americans have been trained to see humans."
Whenever we see a bird locked in a cage and singing, we have been trained to believe they are singing because they are happy. Or if a dog is locked in a bathroom all day while we spend 8 hours working and being free; we still assume they are happy. When I think of every man, woman or child breathing in Black skin, I am aware of the pain. From the moment a child is born with black or brown skin they are judged by their colour and things are assumed about them. Justice and equality does not exist in their world, and never has existed. If things were equal and fair, no one would have to worry about:
Getting an education at a good university
Being hired in a position that you are qualified for and not because of a quota to hire anyone who looks like you and is able to shuffle like a house slave
To be able to walk in any business, grocery store or pharmacy and not be followed by a security guard expecting you to steal merchandise
Being able to walk freely during the day or night without being harassed by the police
Driving without being harassed while Black
Being able to receive medical care immediately for survival. Often Black women are ignored, ofte dismissed from hospitals or not taken serious by medical staff. Breast cancer screenings, test results by a caring physician, and timely followup could increase their chances of survival.
Sitting on your porch or front steps without being asked for your identification by the police that a neighbor called because it's not considered a Black neighbourhood
Giving birth to a little black baby in a hospital where they stick a bottle in their mouth, assuming that it's for the best
Or just entering an elevator for an appointment without white women and men feeling frightened for their lives
These are just a few of the reasons why the caged bird, boy, girl, or person screams so loudly. It may sound like love songs to the captor, but trust me, it's a scream for help from those captured in the cage.
In closing, I would like to share the poem written by Paul Laurence Dunbar that he wrote in 1899. Let me know your thoughts about it.
Sympathy By Paul Laurence Dunbar
I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals--
I know what the caged bird feels!
I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting--
I know why he beats his wing!
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,--
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings--
I know why the caged bird sings!
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