YSWNPY-Zine 20, final - Flipbook - Page 29
Hush your gums. Stop being so loud.
Stop speaking out against people
who are proud
to hate with their chest and spew their vitriol in jest
at people who have to fight every single fucking day
for a right to draw their breath.
You send monthly donations to charities to avoid paying more tax
(tell yourself you’re paying your dues)
but shrivel up in disgust and anger when a stranger
begs you on the street for money or food.
You’re NOT a racist, no, it’s been years since you called someone a n****r
If you speak with intent when you choose to send a message,
they will label you as
You’re NOT a racist:
that dumb black bitch
who can get a bit aggressive.
Though they don’t see all the times you’ve had to bite your tongue,
knowing some people will refuse to see how they are in the wrong.
And to be honest, if you’re really as exhausted as you claim,
You could just give up!
Permit the world to carry on in the same
fucked up and hostile way it’s been developing for years?
Each generation growing more distant from the sound of the tears
of people crying because their lives have been labelled as disposable;
because the grief that comes from mourning a life that could have been saved
is inconsolable
Why don’t you just shut your mouth, join in, start to pillage
from the lives of people whom circumstance didn’t afford much privilege?
You can’t deny you come with your own set of entitlement;
that many of the laws of the land are not passed to your detriment.
So, you may as well abandon those whom society has left for dead
And join in the merciless insensitivity of white supremacy instead.
It’s comfortable at the top, once you learn to never look down
into the eyes of the people who are begging around
your feet.
Foreigners are lazy, they’re stealing our jobs
Even though they are qualified for their role – and you are not.
You’re selling off the NHS whilst paying for your own private healthcare,
No hard feelings, it’s just business,
you tell yourself it’s fair.
Your pity for those in need only stretches the breadth of its allotted slot
of time in your mind. After that, you couldn’t care a jot…
Because, if you really did, your lifestyle wouldn’t be ensuring that those in need
are weighed down with stress and anxiety about the mouths they have to feed.
You don’t know what it’s like to have to get out a payday loan
just so you can afford to buy your kids their compulsory school uniform.
It didn’t occur to you until restaurants, pubs – most of hospitality – were forced to close,
that the work of the ‘needy’ is why you can enjoy being outside of your homes.
I’m sceptical, to say the least, that when the worst has come to pass you will have learned
not to judge or look down on others as a result of the money you have earned. I would
hope that, after all this suffering, you will make more of an effort to be more kind. Stop
dooming history to repeat itself, and to decolonise your mind.
Saying they’re hungry, they’re homeless,
they’re overworked, they’re poor.
If we’re being honest here, you consider them a bit of an eyesore…
If a period of global crisis cannot coerce you to be more compassionate
then I fear for society – I really do – because it’ll mean that
You fear it will drive property prices down
when a tower block is built in your vicinity,
whilst claiming to feel sorry for the victims of Grenfell,
burnt down in London City.
we are well and truly fucked.
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YOUR SILENCE WILL NOT PROTECT YOU 28
But – if black people hate it here so much –
why don’t they just fuck off back to Africa?
