Anger at 4 am

I awoke with a seething anger. As it usually happens, this rage was seated in the bottom of my belly. With the burning in my belly came the memory, wrapped with the anger. It was not a personal experience, but the experience of a young boy I’d never known, nor will ever know him personally.

The memory came from a video I’d seen some years ago; a high school wrestler who had long dread locks. He was told at the beginning of a tournament he could not participate unless he cut his hair. The white female referee got a pair of scissors and chopped off his beautiful hair.

The cutting remark which came to my mind was, ‘who are you fucking Delilah’?  I was amazed at the venom in my mind/ it was years since I’ve experienced such fury. My venom ran into ‘what if he was a Rastafarian’?  It is their religion to never cut their hair. I know I was there when the Rastafarians got started in Jamaica. What if he was s Sheikh; they also let their grow as long as it wants to.

The indignity of standing before his team mates and the opponents as this person, who was not a relative, nor an elder in his community, slashed the love hair from his head burned within my gut. It is the collective pain of being black. The scab from my own wound is being ripped off and it is most painful.

I have a whole lot of metaphysics to draw upon. I have the strong belief that we create our own reality. That somehow the lad and Delilah were in this together to inform us and themselves where we need to change. That knowing however does not mitigate the raw fact that she humiliated the young boy before the whole world. What scars he still carries I do not know. This much I do know he must have been hurt.

For years I’ve processed my feelings from a personal point of view. The very first question I’d ask myself was ‘why did I create this’? whatever the ‘this’ was it was always my personal riddle to solve and grow from. Not this one. Now I understand why ‘Jesus wept’.

Compassion for humanity says I am entitled to this anger. I own it on behalf of every black person who has ever experienced an indignity because of being black. I own it for the many times I have remained quiet simply to avoid a scene when I’ve being profiled, or being followed in a store. I won this anger. With the power of my imagination, I am able to transform this rage into a greater love than I and all black people everywhere know now. I accord myself and mine a new and more expansive so that together we may draw in the seemingly unlovable. With this thought I can release myself, Delilah and everyone who deem humans in black skins to be unworthy of our place within a Universe of love. In this manner we find the Oneness in which we have being. Selah