THE TWENTY SECOND YEAR

THE MISEDUCATION OF THE NEGRO

I.
It is a privilege to have a beginning.

II.
In History, we studied the Holocaust
and called it by its other name: atrocity.

III.
In History, we studied slavery
but only a few paragraphs.
For the Holocaust, a whole unit.
We wrote our own narratives
about what it was like to be
a Jewish person in Auschwitz.

        [Yes. Even in our first great march
        into empathy,
        there was irony.]

IV.
We did not write our own narratives
about what it was like to be an enslaved African
on a plantation.

V.
In History, Black people are a page.

Black men are a paragraph.

Black women are a sentence.

I am a letter.

VII.
In History, we were sentenced to bondage
and then sentenced to freedom, but not
          liberation.

VIII.
At birth, we are all sentenced to life—
           to live. History says
we did not exist before. History says

there was no before. History says
            we began in chains
and ended without them. Specifically,

when the master chose
             to break them.

IX.
It is a privilege to have a beginning.