"Eyes Like Mine"
written by Joylynn M. Jossel
created by me but who is now mine. I have never even been one to baby-sit,
but I keep telling myself that everything is going to be fine. I had not
looked at a child as being anything more than a bother. Now here I am doing another man's job by being this child's father. Don't get me wrong. I love this little boy as if he were my own. It scares me though, that someday he will be a black man out in this world alone. I see black men dying left and right; a knife through the heart; a bullet through the head. My mother used to tell me that the black man doesn't die, he's born dead. Mother would repeat "The doctors should snap the black man's neck
at birth. A horse isn't even forced to suffer. The life of a black man
doesn't get any better. It only gets rougher and rougher." As a boy, these were the put-downs I would constantly hear because Mother was set on putting the black man down. I too would some day grow to be a black man so I worried if Mother would, then, want me around. By being born a male I had already failed her in life. It was serendipity, but Mother's tongue would prepare me for the fight...
