RE: [HoB/D] Lowery's prayer

[Louie Crew <lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu>]

Lowery counterstated a vicious and threatening poem that overseers and owners
said during slavery.

                 Black,
                     go back.
                 Brown,
                     stick around.

These lines were known by almost every one of my African American students
when I taught for nine years of the 1970s in black higher education in
Georgia and in South Carolina.

The slave overseer invited "brown" to "stick around" because of visual
evidence that another overseer had his way sexually earlier with brown's
mother or grandmother.   The poem is a lurid sexual overture by a white
predator.

Lowery's prayer recalled this legacy of slavery and lanced some of the
poison -- straight from Lowery's lips to God's ear, and to the ears of anyone
who has ears to hear!

White people will almost never "get it" if we play back every such statement
to see how it would feel if reversed.  We whites have not been slaves and
have never been victimized in this way.

Louie, L1 Newark

Louie Crew, 377 S. Harrison St., 12d, East Orange, NJ 07018.  973-395-1068
http://queereye4lectionary.blogspot.com/ Queer Eye for the Lectionary