For Jordan Davis- “Turn Up Our Africanity : Blackness Volume on MAX”

According to croberts5

Peace and solidarity first to the family and friends of Jordan Davis.

Jordan Davis. Turn Up. Ashe.

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White supremacy likes its Black people on mute. Dumb, deaf, and blind.

Dumb about the teachings of her past

Deaf to the screams of his present

Blind to the potential of our future

White supremacy likes its Black people on mute.

Jordan Davis turned his Blackness up too high, cultural decibel level was off the Hume scale

For the Negro has no art of value, so young Black boy proceed to turn that rap shit down

Jordan Davis, the drapetomaniac he was, dared not acquiesce to the whims of a random white man

For the Negro is the submissive knee bender, so young Black boy assume the position

Jordan Davis intentionally lived, and that for young Black men in the U.S. often die

Jordan’s Blackness was turned up too high for Michael Dunn, so he muted him

There is nothing more African than the drum, our ancestral heartbeat is the baseline by which we survive

It is in the boom of the drum where we feel liberation we cannot yet see

So when we turn our music up we are just being free

Because everything else about being African we’ve been conditioned to mute

And told that turning our Blackness on silent would keep us alive

But Africa vibrates through Hiphop

So even when the only thing turned up is our music, sometimes we still die

Drums were made illegal in the states that enslaved because they spoke to the soul

Of which our enslavers were absent

So since they could not understand, they told us to stop, to turn down, and for what

Because they knew our freedom was there

So we turned down being African, and then entered the Negro loud and clear

Respectable Black people, refined and contrite

Conscious of their “place”

Always behaving “right”

But Negroes too die at the hands of white supremacy, and this point we cannot miss

Sometimes having your Blackness turned up too loud, simply means you exist

Knots in the throats of Negroes who have muted their African speakers

Thrown all sounds from the Continent into the ether of assimilation

Burned all instruments of our own and become the instruments of others

Under the assumption that they have a symphony of European acceptance that awaits them

But all they hear is white noise

Because the truth is Negro you will never be one of the boys

But Blackness on silent is what we’ve been taught so that’s what we do

And when we try to turn our Blackness up some of us don’t know what to say

Cause that Eurocentric knot in your throat has convinced your Negro mind that your African soul has nothing to say

Jordan Davis, Troy Davis, Renisha, Trayvon and Jonathan Ferrell

All of these beautiful souls still have a story to tell

And maybe they’ll help us clear our throats

Cause either from our African souls we speak, or on these Eurocentric knots we choke

Turn up.