One White Girl PondersStrange Behavior, by Marilyn Buck

It is strange to me
that so many white folks
were upset and enraged
by the federal carnage
at the fundamentalist farmhouse
at Waco

These same "folks"
were not distraught or outraged
by the Philadelphia firestorm
where Black people
were massacred
and Black folk's homes
became ashes

It is strange to me
that the po - lice and FBI
are not running around
kicking in white folks' doors
or stopping all blond or brown-haired men
wearing Levis or Brooks Brothers suits
or Stetsons or John Deere caps
You know:
a search, brutalize, blow-away mission
like those in South Central LA
Washington DC
Harlem or el barrio

After all, wasn't it
all-American white males
who blew up the federal building
in Oklahoma City?

It is strange to me
how civilized government agents can be
when it is their friends
they are looking for

It is strange to me
how much fear
the "white" world carries
in its under-siege shoulders
bullet-proofed chests
and M-16s
to ward off the shadows
of half a millenium of
massacres and killing fields
slavery, lynch mobs
and death penalties

Not only is it strange
it’s time
for radical behavior
modification