(OSCAR) Old Southern Californian Aryan Racketeers
by Raymond Nat Turner
Curtain rising, Black images
Fading, lost, stolen, strayed;
‘White’ suspense speeches
Read like corporate talking
Points, red carpet, 30 million
Viewers, Grand Jury True Bills—
Dice loaded, card’s marked,
Diversity smells like charcoal…
Well, “Hooray for Hollywood”
Never meant Black folk no good…
Get over opinions of color-
Blind ‘white’ men with
Bleached white plastic
Smiles, like you got over
Santa Claus, tooth fairies and
Taney’s Dred Scott script—
Oscar Micheaux’s the only
Oscar relevant, ignore pink-
Eyed lobbyists with detached
Retinas, jaundiced scammers
Legally blind, like monkeys on
Capitalist Hill, like sightless
Juries who saw Rodney as King-
Kong, “controlling the situation,”
Mike Brown as “Hulk Hogan
Bulking up, running through shots,”
Eric Garner as an irresponsible
Stuntman, holding his breath
After his scene was a wrap—
Well, “Hooray for Hollywood”
Never meant Black folk no good…
Quit crashing burning house
Parties, wincing at embers, and
Acrid smoke blinding teleprompter
Readers, missing the Hurricane and X
Denzel whipped up, Round Midnight
Dexter Gordon delivered, timelessly,
Soldier Story Adolph Caesar marshaled, masterfully…
…Selma?
Well, “Hooray for Hollywood”
Never meant Black folk no good…
So tap grapevines, pool pennies
Grown at grassroots; hand out
Statuettes resembling Robeson,
Josephine Baker, Ruby Dee and
Ossie Davis—call ‘em ‘Robies,’
‘Paulies,’ ‘Josies,’ ‘Rubies,’
‘Ossies—‘ just do it…
Raymond Nat Turner can be contacted at Raymond (at) upsurgejazz.com
Raymond Nat Turner © 2015 All Rights Reserved
Shirley Graham Du Bois on the liberation of Palestine.
A recurring social media trope casts Rwandan President Paul Kagame as a defiant African hero, like Burkina Faso’s Ibrahim Traoré, resisting the West’s dictates, but nothing could be further from the…
Muriel Bowser is proving that Black faces in high places don’t break systems, they grease them. While slashing wages for tipped workers and handing billionaires stadium deals, D.C.’s mayor is the…
The Democratic Party would rather silence critics like Hogg than fix its own rot. Their reliance on Black Misleaders to do the dirty work exposes once again that the Democrats care more about power…
Malcolm X didn’t just fight for Black liberation—he waged war on empire itself. As U.S. militarism tightens its grip on Africa and beyond, his revolutionary internationalism burns brighter than ever…
