There Will Always Be Racism
And
Justice ain’t coming no time soon.

Demand it all you want
Someone out there won’t get the memo.
Racism’s perverted, constructed monstrosity,
Humanity’s Frankenstein
Social construction,
Will work it’s lips to call you a name
As you walk by a window.
It will drive up behind you
Follow you in a store
Lie shallow beneath the soil of living,
And rise up to curse you
Resurrected
In the mouth of ignorance.

Excuses and explanations
Suggest it will die
In the next generation,
Yet it gestates spontaneously
In the womb
Of a fearful jealous heart;
Shed hair off the dog
Of supposed superiority
In babies yet to come.

In the name of culture and comfort
Educational choice for the children
Protected and preserved
By inheritance,
Intimate webs of relationships,
The segregation of wealth.

Exposed by incidental authoritative
Violence
Across the entire nation,
Out of proportion to its geography,
Reveals nonetheless
A long history
Of fear,
The despising of persons,
The need for control.
An insidious campaign
For assumed entitled privilege
Property and zip codes
Lined for isolation or
Disinvestment.
Other people’s children to be remanded
For our safety demanded.

This is not despair
Though it could be,
This is not pessimism,
Though it would be
If reality wasn’t healthy to be faced.

So is evil like nature?
Lava flows no matter what you wish
Accept it, fear it,
Just avoid the trouble if you can?
Tides ebb and flow
The turbulence of life,
Can we stem the tide of injustice,
Or drowning,
Surrender to an inevitable undertow?

Human produced cruelty
Of action and insult
Morphed to inhumanity.
Are there jetties, sea breaks,
Barrier reefs against assaulting
Personhood and neighborhood destroying
Waves
Which can be built?

We are forced to wait
While we try,
But
We must try!
While we wait
For Love’s and Justice’s foray
A Rider called Faithful and True
Will judge with justice and make war
Where righteousness will have its day
Among the colors, and tongues,
Of all the children of men.

Randy Nabors is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America.
Feb. 2016