Dear Ignorance,
I have a problem with the word imperialist.
From time imperial can be synonymized with
Regal, majestic, and sovereign –
You can go ahead and miss me with that imperialist bull quick
Because Rhodes didn’t ‘regally’ rob my people.
Neither did he ‘majestically’ murder the masses of bodies now lying in unmarked graves.
Identities turned into commodities to feed your steeples.
Blood money from slave roads, hell –
Colonies built your paved roads.
But please…tell me…
What deity died to give you the audacity,
To claim to have sovereignty over my people?
Rhodes said he prefers land to niggers,
Guessing that’s why he and colonizers like him
Ploughed the black earth of our skin, making fertile his colonial legacies.
It wasn’t enough that the world was his chess board
See he got bored and had to pilfer all the pieces too.
Rhodes must fall for every diamond encrusted tear that was stolen.
Every home and black body that was ever broken
Used as a token
All under the banner of empire.
So let’s just tell it how it is, and the truth is, is this:
Rhodes was a glorified murderer.
Pedestal-raised butcher.
And only a few words more that I was never raised to utter.
But you continuously fail to recognize your classy lies,
Cause your utopia was built on the hands of the fallen.
So you think you can smirk in my face,
Reflecting your ignorance to the plight of my race,
When I tell you we should decolonize Oxford.
But like I said –
Go ahead and miss me with that imperialist bull quick.
Now let’s move onto the movement.
Society would have you believe we’ve moved on from colonialism.
Nobody wants to understand that it’s a structural prism.
See some mentalities are built on the privilege you were given
Others are built on the realities of the privilege you weren’t living
Till you’re perpetually stuck in your society’s prison.
Oh it’s easy to acknowledge Oxford is steeped in tradition,
But when you’re in it,
Not so much to accept that it’s a one-sided rendition.
A narrative told from a magnifying glass ceiling.
Hear the quick call to decolonize our education.
See the fighting white tears to keep our miseducation.
So a further ignorant few say we’re erasing history,
But I’d like to point out our restoration
Of an unspoken narrative erased from the fabrication of his story
As a ‘benefactor’ and a ‘politician’.
A man with a singularly ‘business minded’ mission.
Just type Rhodes into your search bar and
Let me show you
How we’ve created
New roads of discussion.
Opened the book on a history never spoken.
If there are two sides to every coin
Well then here’s a little heads up
Cause we’re flipping the tale and
Flipping the switch
Onto the side of a truth unspoken.
Sincerely woke,
Princess Ashilokun
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Sign our Change.org petition to remove the statue here:
#RHODESMUSTFALL 