when teachers think field trips
to plantation and cotton field
are “great ideas” for black students,

or that it is “cool” to watch the transatlantic slave trade,
I know their ancestors
were my ancestors’ masters
and scarred their backs heavily
were the ones ripping apart families
for profit or pleasure or both.

these teachers are also the ones that say
if we don’t learn from our history,
we are doomed to repeat it. doomed for one community
to merely exist as footholds
because of the color of their skin again?

I want to laugh at these white women.
loudly. in their faces. and cry.
they are doing this. now.
and don’t realize it, don’t see our children
as more than poor, slang-speaking,
pant-hanging thugs.

why bring an anger they already have to a boil?
the anger is in our dna. the anger is in my blood.
we black people don’t need no reminders. never have,
all we need is conversation with our grandmothers to re-live it.
and our children don’t need to be auctioned off
even in jest, in “well-meaning” dialogue.

sell your white kids, then. we not property
nor playthings. we people.
do not forget this
in the haste to dehumanize the black body
to break black boys.

Don’t worry—our children will learn their history
of pain and adversities and truth
but not like that.

*** an earlier version of this piece was published by SWWIM

Ashley Elizabeth (she/her) is a writing consultant, teacher, and poet. Her works have appeared in SWWIM, Memoir Mixtapes, and Zoetic Press, among others. Her chapbook, you were supposed to be a friend, is available at Nightingale & Sparrow (June 2020). When Ashley isn't serving as assistant editor at Sundress Publications or working as a member of the Estuary Collective, she habitually posts on Twitter and Instagram (@ae_thepoet). She lives in Baltimore, MD with her partner and hopefully soon a few furry friends.