Where is my son?!
Her anguished cries ring aloud,
She wants to beat the man armed with the gun,
But that uncouth behavior is not allowed.
There is a raging storm brewing in her mind,
As any normal parent would expect,
But the feeling in her gut serves to remind,
Of what happens if her reactions go unchecked.
For one misstep, mistake, mispeak,
Will cost her everything, why she’s here to start,
As she does her best to seem docile, not weak,
As that is what they like, soft spoken, tender heart.
So God forbid she lashes out in fear,
Scared as Hell and missing her son,
Because this isn’t home, not a friendly face here,
Not when you’re talking to the man with the gun.
He laughs in her face
He makes racist remarks,
He smiles to abase,
Disregards her claims as farce.
So she sits.
She sits and she waits, helpless in these walls,
She looks around and wonders,
What happened to Jamal.
Then enters her husband,
The white man! Here to save the day,
Without him she is stranded,
Her skin has left no other way.
For no one will admit it’s true.
Not her spouse and not the police,
Racism? That’s ancient “boo,”
Just go ahead, disturb our peace.
So now she’s an aggressor,
Not a scared, confused, and angry mom,
The words in reports make her seem lesser,
Because she failed to sit quiet and calm.
The rest of the movie is pointless.
You know how it’s going to end.
You’ve seen how they treated the mother,
Who lost her own son, her little kid.
The marital problems and shouting,
The childhood stories of how they’re brought up,
Their parental method doubting,
And fighting over who’s more messed up.
But none if it matters.
None of it at all.
Because in the end, their son dies.
Their little boy Jamal.
That is the point, the meaning of this film.
Is that their son was killed.
But the way they were treated was so horribly different,
And not because of anything other than skin.
And this isn’t a systematic issue we can fix with some legislation,
Something we can wave a wand to and reprogram our nation.
It’s something that requires an individual person to reflect within,
And ask if it’s right to judge someone for merely their skin.
The answer might be obvious, but achieving it is harder,
It requires constant working and awareness,
It’s something you must strive for with ardor.
Remember this movie,
About the mother that you saw.
Because she’s real,
And she needs a little love from us all.
Help make this world one where she’s not scared to be scared,
When you can read a newspaper title and not be prepared,
For it to detail how an unarmed black man was shot before his life had begun.
Shot by the man, the man with the gun.
