Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

Harriet Tubman Tests?
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
07 Feb 2012

by Raymond Nat Turner

The poet is talking about those who peddle “pork barrel pedagogy…selling blankets bearing smallpox— blankets smothering spirits and crushing minds of black and brown babies, like cigarette butts.”

 

Harriet Tubman Tests?

by Raymond Nat Turner

(For OPT, CW, Ms C, Ms G, BOJ, KKE, DR)

Now, I can see and hear the

Music in my ear from my first

Teacher, the militant I called

 “Mommy,” rising at some school

Board meeting and launching into

 What she called her “nut role,”

 Asking as only she could, “Since

  You’re ‘teaching to the test,’ are

 The tests you’re teaching to Harriet

 Tubman or Sojurner Truth tests?”

 

After the laughter and applause

Subside, she might add, “Someone—

I won’t say who—said pork barrel

Pedagogy you’re peddling is like

Selling blankets bearing smallpox—

Blankets smothering spirits and

Crushing minds of black and brown

Babies, like cigarette butts beneath

The boot heels of billionaires…”

 

Then, she might even ask her grand-

Son, the professor of education, grand-

Daughter the parent-teacher, or son

The poet, to second that emotion:

 

In the Race To The Slop,

Sooie…

Legato laughter, staccato shrieks of

Gleeful play, keep fleeing fire fights

Forbidding imagination, frowning on

Free-thinking, disallowing discovery and

Putting dreamers to death with magic

Bullet, single-shot solutions leaving all

Children behind, caged, crippled or blind.

 

In the Race To The Slop,

Sooie…

There are Green Zones, dubbed “Work- 

Force Development Systems” by white

Knights of the Business Roundtable, killing

Fields where sage, seasoned teachers keep

Falling like dried rose petals, under frantic

Fusillades of child soldiers pointing No. 2

Pencils like M-16s— elite bubble snipers

Suffering PTSD: Post Test Stress Disorder…

 

In the Race To The Slop,

Oink,

Schools are troughs, full of juicy

Green apples— business banquets

 Spinning stress into gold; pureeing

Plays, poems, songs, paintings,

Dances and children into super-

Sized, hollowed-out, spiritually

Emaciated men and women, comfortable

With collateral damage in multiple, serial,

 Video game-like wars, for persons

 Having Big Brother, but no heartbeat

 Or blood count…

  

Raymond Nat Turner © 2012 All Rights Reserved

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


More Stories


  • Democrats Exposed By the End of Roe v. Wade
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Democrats Exposed By the End of Roe v. Wade
    29 Jun 2022
    The full extent of Democratic Party treachery was exposed when the Roe v. Wade decision was overturned. Only right wing Americans have any expectation of getting what they want from the electoral…
  • SPEECH: Revolution: It’s Not Easy, Quick, or Pretty, Pat Parker, 1980
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    SPEECH: Revolution: It’s Not Easy, Quick, or Pretty, Pat Parker, 1980
    29 Jun 2022
    ​​​​​​​A 1980 speech by Black lesbian poet and activist Pat Parker provides a feminist, anti-imperialist blueprint for the present.
  • Ethnic Violence Plagues Ethiopia Near its Mighty New Dam
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Ethnic Violence Plagues Ethiopia Near its Mighty New Dam
    29 Jun 2022
    Conflict in Ethiopia continues to claim the lives of many civilians, as recently happened in the Wellega region.
  • Drunken Count Ghouliani/low Barr-Boss Tweet revealing irreparable rot of capitalism…
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Drunken Count Ghouliani/low Barr-Boss Tweet revealing irreparable rot of capitalism…
    29 Jun 2022
    Drunken Count Ghouliani/low Barr-Boss Tweet revealing irreparable rot of capitalism…
  • BAR Book Forum: Robtel Neajai Pailey’s “Development, (Dual) Citizenship and Its Discontents in Africa”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Robtel Neajai Pailey’s “Development, (Dual) Citizenship and Its Discontents in Africa”
    29 Jun 2022
    This week’s featured author is Robtel Neajai Pailey. Pailey is Assistant Professor in International Social and Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her book is…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us