(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
In this week’s segment, we talk about the latest iterations of immigration enforcement and their connections to racist public policy, mass incarceration, and the settler colonial foundations of the…
Our guest is Dr. Rosemari Mealy. She is the author of "Fidel and Malcolm: Memories of a Meeting," which analyzes the significance of the 1960 meeting between Fidel Castro and Malcolm X. She has lived…
The Trump administration is accelerating policies meant not just to deport undocumented people, but to restrict every avenue of legal immigration from the Global South. Abraham Paulos is Deputy…
In this episode of El Taller, hosts José Luis Granados Ceja and Kurt Hackbarth sit down with Ajamu Baraka, national organizer and spokesperson for the Black Alliance for Peace, a former vice-…
There is nothing mysterious about Trump’s effort to curb legal immigration. White supremacy is the explanation.
