'Education' by Pamela Maria Chavez
The other day I had a conversation with a friend of mine that reminded me what a bad rap Black consciousness gets in this hemisphere. He is a phenotypically White Armenian American whose grandmother arrived in the United States as a refugee from a vicious genocide. The wisdom he received from her included impressions of the United States as a bastion of liberty and safety, which he holds closely and fiercely as good grandkids of grandparents now gone often do. I hold the insights of my African American grandfather similarly, and the content of his reflections were dominated by the push and pull of the United States as the only home he ever knew and a perpetrator in the centuries-long crime against his people, the effects of which made him a refugee in his own country...(read more)