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Untitled
Enakeisha Orr

Here I lie...
In my grave
For I’ve already been found guilty
By trillions of strangers
Who never even knew me

I lay out…
In black
Asleep but no peace
For even in death
Is the “mark of the beast”

Life on display
Not in a wooden box
But in a screen of the people who side with the cops

“No man might buy or sell,

Save he that had the mark.”
There’s no garden of eden
To guide through the dark

Don’t stand on my grave

Do not stand here and weep
For I’m not here; I do not sleep

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— David Duke, “Will the White Race Survive?” June 22, 2010

Enakeisha Orr

“Are facts racist too? Are white parents racist because they don’t want their children to go to school where their

children are ten times more likely to be robbed or abused, intimidated, beaten, or even killed or raped? A

school where obscenity, drugs and violence and gangster rap are the dominant culture? Where sexual

intimidation, obscene or crude language, or even sexual assault is pervasive? Schools that academically

resemble more the third world than America? I know

some of you don’t worry about the white children in those environments. It’s considered noble to concern yourself

with the well being of minorities even at the farthest ends of the earth. But if you’re white, and you concern

yourself with the well being of your own people, even of your own children, you’re deemed racist. The real

racism today is not by white people, it’s against white people.”

Original: “Are facts racist too? Are white parents racist because they don’t want their children to go to school where

their children are ten times more likely to be robbed or abused, intimidated, beaten, or even killed or raped?

A school where obscenity, drugs and violence and gangster rap are the dominant culture? Where sexual

intimidation, obscene or crude language, or even sexual assault is pervasive? Schools that academically

resemble more the third world than America? I know

some of you don’t worry about the white children in those environments. It’s considered noble to concern yourself

with the well being of minorities even at the farthest ends of the earth. But if you’re white, and you concern

yourself with the well being of your own people, even of your own children, you’re deemed racist. The real

racism today is not by white people, it’s against white people.”

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A House is Not a Home

Enakeisha Orr

A house built on broken backs

On stolen land
But you have the nerve to tell me
I do not belong

I do not belong, because I come from the wrong side of the tracks
Tracks built by your ancestors to make sure we had no power
You have deemed me unable to be educated
The same way your ancestors refused to free mine
Kept us locked away
Told us how to live
And deprived us from speaking
From learning
From being

From being free

Now you say
I was targeted
But the bright red target on my scarred back had been painted
Not because of my race
But because I “fit the description”
Ask Urban Dictionary
And that can be defined as the phrase that police use to justify arresting any African American in any situation.
Now you're asking me where I’m going, where that is, how I got here?
The holster of your gun snapped
I'm scared

I'm scared of the law

Of my chances against a jury
The laws have always been written against me, they’ve excluded me
Your lie can not deceive me,
I will not fall into your trap
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Because I am done

I am done using my back as a stepping stone

On land that was never yours
Your complex of being superior
Will come to an end at once
The feeling of being an outside is no more

For in this new america

I will be free
Because this house built on our backs
Won’t be a home until we allow ourselves to be more than what you’ve let us

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