Two Sets of Notes - M. K. Asante, Jr.
I find myself feeling
As if I am ‘pon the ground & ceiling,
In institutions that
disengage from healing
Instead, the simply
warp open wounds
& Entrap me in
rooms
where I am consumed by
hypocrisy
& It occurs to me:
Greek philosophers
didn’t author their own philosophy
& The statues on
campus be watchin’ me,
Washington . . .
Jefferson . . . Williams,
Clockin’ me-
As if to say ‘time’s
up’
But I don’t run laps
on tracks
I run laps around the
scholars of tomorrow
Because new schools of
thought
Are merely out history
borrowed
& They label me
militant, and black national radical,
trying to put my
learning process on sabbatical
I don’t apologize,
Instead I spit truth
into the whites of eyes infected by
white lies.
They even try to get
me to see-
Their point of view
from a brother that looks like me,
but that brother
don’t-
walk like me
talk like me
or
act like me,
and that brother
turned his head
when I asked if he was
black like me.
Mastering their
thoughts
and forgetting our own
and we wonder why we
always feel alone,
from the media to
academia-
hanging brothers like
coats
and in their schools.
. . .
I always take two sets
of notes,
one set to ace the
test
and
one set I call the
truth,
and when I find
historical contradictions
I used the first set
as proof-
proof that black
youths’
mind are being-
polluted,
convoluted,
diluted,
not culturally rooted.
In anything
except the Western
massacre
and most of us are
scared of Africa,
we view our mother’s
land
Through the eyes of
David Hume and Immanuel Kant
well
Immanuel kan’t tell me
anything about a land he’s never
seen
a land rich with
history
beautiful kings and
queens.
They’ll have you
believe other wise
their history is built
on high-rise lies
the pyramids were completed
before Greece or Rome
were conceptualized,
then they’ll claim the
Egyptians’ race was a mystery
you tell them to read
Herodotus Book II of the histories
it cannot be any
clearer. . . .
Black children
look in the mirror
you are the reflection
of divinity
don’t let them fool
you with selective memory
walk high, listen to
the elder who spoke
Black Students,
Always take two sets of notes.
____________________________________
This poem was written by M. K. Asante, Jr. in his book “It’s
Bigger than Hip Hop” on chapter 10, pages 191-194.
Mr. Asante was invited as a guest to King Drew High School
and had read this poem to the black and brown students.
“Two Sets of Notes” is a poem about African Americans being
educated only about the history of White Americans, African American being brain
wash thinking the whites are heroes and the blacks are stupid, African
Americans with no knowledge of their own culture because it wasn’t being taught
to them. So Mr. Asante recommends them to write two sets of notes during
classes: one note to ace the test, and the second one to find the truth for and
of yourself.
Though this poem is directed to African Americans, I feel
this poem can also help other ethnicities: Asian American, Latinos, Native
Americans, et cetera. With the educations that America is giving to us, we
don’t have the chance to learn and acknowledge our own culture’s heroic
ancestors. In school, we are only learning about the “history” of America where
it makes our cultures look like the bad guys which makes us hate our own
ethnicity and ancestors. But, is all written history really true?
In “It’s Bigger than Hip Hop”, Mr. Asante had included a
quote from Kwame Ture in chapter 10, pages 194-195:
The first one is that
the history books tell you that nothing happens until a white man comes along.
If you ask any white person who discovered America, they’ll tell you
“Christopher Columbus.” And if you ask them who discovered China, they’ll tell
you “Marco Polo.” And if you ask them, as I used to be told in the West Indies,
I was not discovered until Sir Walter Raleigh needed pitch lake for his ship,
and he came along and found me and said “Whup-I have discovered you” and my
history began.”
Some written histories in schools are like that, where the
Americans conclude that it was them that discovered what had already been
there. There are also times where they just don’t write EVERY detail and event
that had happen, where the Americans were bad and others were good.
“It may be presented to you through you history books that
history is a fact. No, history is a debate” – M. K. Asante, Jr.
“History is a lie agreed upon.” – Napoleon.
So therefore, the first sets of notes that is used to ace
the test are only what you learn at school and the second sets of notes that
are used to find the truth for and of yourself are facts you find at home and
on your free time. Sure it may sound like a lot of work, but knowledge is the
real power in the world. If you don’t educate yourself, you surely be pushed
around.
“Self-education moves against what we’ve been taught
education is.” – M.K. Asante, Jr.
We still haven’t obtained our FREEDOM yet. To get that we
need to fight and to fight we need the intelligence of how the “game” is being
played.
M. K. Asante, Jr. had also done two sets of notes during his
high school, college, and graduate levels. And it worked for him. So let’s continue on this great method and
fight on!
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