Tired Of Turning The Other Cheek

Sometimes, one just runs out of cheeks to turn.

The nation is held hostage because a handful of extreme tea partiers, racists, don't like the color of the President's skin.  Their hatred is that this man, this black man, dared to take advantage of all the opportunities afforded to us in the last fifty years and do the impossible - rise to the highest office of the land - and they despise him, me, and everyone else who looks like him.

State-after-state has reported incidents of things from the minor to the major from people being unfairly terminated from their jobs for speaking up for their rights to police brutality the likes of Bull Connor with his dogs to voting rights violations and assaults on a woman's body.  Over and over it has been a repeal of the social structure of the last fifty years because the fabric of racism can not phantom the reality that our country is browning, that being white is not exceptional.

Sometimes, one gets tired of turning the other cheek.

That time has come, time to stop the polite conversation and excusing those who do these wrongs because just short of physical lynchings, they have already destroyed countless lives.

The shutdown of the government is backed in the fact that the private sector refused to hire people of color so the government opened wide the doors of public service and people of color and women marched in.  They brought with them the hopes and dreams of their ancestors and the parchment of degrees earned at the nation's many HBCUs.  For a generation, they were able to move up in the ranks in state and federal jobs, securing their place and the place of their offspring in the middle class, assuring that their children would have it a little easier, like my late father.

And the elite could no longer stand it, their unrighteous indignation that an education is a equalizer and the playing field was finally fair, so they voted to strip away affirmative action at leading universities in the country, like the University of Michigan, because sure a black or brown child is not better than their white child.  Surely they are not smarter.

Then one smart kid grew up and worked his way until he found himself and his brown skinned family in the house that slaves built, and folks lost their minds.

The cheeks being slapped are tired of the red marks of discrimination, harassment, and silence from their white friends.

Finally, they reached the point that they didn't care if they even destroyed their own and rendered the full faith and credit of the United States a moot notion, they are stand on the precipice, extorting an unpayable ransom, because they hate the color of his skin, my skin,

Sometimes, one has to stand in the public square and scream! Enough! No more cheeks to turn!