(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Different Views, you and I [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2026-04-09 Different worlds: The Other Side of Blackness Have you ever left home under the sun, gotten to work, had a coworker come in with an umbrella and though “why do they have an umbrella?” and if you have (or something similar) did your thought stop there or did you walk it through and thought… “ohh maybe where they live it was raining this morning?”. See that’s the difference between us, I’ve walked your neighborhoods, gone to your schools usually named after some slave owner, worked in your offices, but few of you have ventured into my world. Yet, you still contend you “understand where I’m coming from” or worse you challenge my worldview because you’ve never seen it. Make no mistakes, we do not live in the same United States of America, you and I. We know your world, you do not know ours. One may think that desegregation happened some 60 years ago, but one would be wrong. The “colored” signs disappeared, true, but segregation is still alive and kicking up the dust known as racism which also has never gone away, not in the 60’s not in the 80’s as some demographics love to point to… Again different worlds. People don’t generally come to our neighborhoods to join us, they come to push us out, to “take back their space” gentrification is also segregation. That’s why we had to create spaces to elevate our own and when we did? Black History Month, BET Awards, etc… people like them scream reverse racism and oppression. There’s just no being “right” for us. If we point out the racism, we are playing the race card, if we protest we are complaining, if we create our own space we are discriminating against you. The reason some people think racism and desegregation worked is the same reason they thought “this can’t happen here”. Once the civil rights act was passed, the dusted off their hands, clapped each other on the back and closed (or glued) their eyes and their ears, because problem solved! Out of sight out of mind! But the problem wasn’t solved, under the makeshift band aid, the wound festered and gangrened until one day it burst open and the putrid stench filled the world’s nostrils… that woke up some folks. Others had never been asleep and again contrary to popular beliefs, those who had stayed awake were not the good guys. They were the ones that had been planning for the gangrene burst, eagerly awaiting the rupture (not the rapture). There was one other group that also had never been asleep though, how could we? We were the prey, always on guard, always alert, because when trouble came a knocking it was in our neighborhoods not theirs. See it’s find and dandy to tell me the sun is shinning in your yard, so why don’t I go and have a picnic in mine, but problem is… in my neighborhood? It’s raining. The funny thing is they still talk about Black communities, neighborhoods, inner city… and yet still even as they say it they don’t see the segregation slipping from their very own lips “it will affect Black and Brown communities” if we were so desegrated how can anything affect us based on the color of our skins? Hmm? Now things are worse than ever for us and I’m going to let you in on a secret, we know why you keep asking us to shut up about issues, so you can “win at all cost”, it’s those little voices whispering “if it weren’t for those people asking for representations and rights, we wouldn’t be in this mess”, did you think we didn’t know? And be sure every marginalized group is included in that “those people” of yours, we also know this. Let me paint you an ugly picture: You (the folks I’m talking about) eating; the racism, sexism, fascism, transphobia, homophobia, xenophobia and then are shocked when they get explosive you know what. All we told you was: stop eating hate, reject it like a bad habit that it is, like the toxic thing that it is: but naw… the problem is us the Black folks or other marginalized groups. We’ve never asked for your rights to be removed, threaded upon, ignored, we’ve never wished harm upon you, all we ever asked for was let all who live on US soil enjoy the same US rights, fully, no exceptions. Some folks refuse and reject that and here we are today. Know what our little voices are saying? Guess… nope, guess again… still guessing wrong. Cause it’s “maybe this time they’ll learn”. We ain’t holding our breaths though. Cause when the good guy is part of the problem it is so much harder to solve it. Poem Windows: #TheAmericanHaitianPoet Muriel Vieux – April 9th, 2026 – ©All rights reserved Paypal.me/murielvieux [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/4/9/2377096/-Different-Views-you-and-I?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/