THE FASHIONABLY ABSTRACT #2: "Reparations Now" ~ Represent the Renaissance ~ by MOHN...

This is one of the first images I ever took on a digital camera. I took this picture about 2 1/2 years ago, when I was merely a sophomore at Howard University. As a growing young man hailing from a small, affluent, and predominantly white Massachusetts suburb I was still wet behind the ears and naïve to city life and the depth, reality, and essentially the infinite beauty of the “Black Experience.” As I strolled down the city streets learning with every step, I used to see these stickers scattered throughout the black neighborhoods mostly placed on light posts. Every time I saw a sticker like this, I would stop and reflect quickly, my body overwhelmed with a constellation of mixed emotions; confusion being the ruler. At that point in my life, I simply did not know how to feel… I would look at the sticker and I would think. I would think about the drug addicts, the drug dealers, the dilapidated buildings, the night I nearly witnessed a murder, the police sirens, and the gunshots I would hear from time to time. But mainly, I thought about the children, whom I was mentoring, whose innocent faces were, at the age of six, already scarred by the torment of poverty. I would think about the children who called me “Daddy,” because they didn’t know their own father. These were the children who would look at me with innocent desperation who did not know why, but just knew their lives were a little bit harder than everybody else’s. I would then walk back to my dorm with my head either to the ground or the sky, still pondering the meaning of these two words, “Reparations Now…”

Today, in the midst of gentrification, neighborhood reconstruction, and the influx of Caucasian individuals into these neighborhoods, I do not see these stickers anymore. However, when I look at this picture now, it holds more meaning than ever before. To me, these words “Reparations Now,” symbolize the ideals expressed in the campaign and embodied by the man, Barack Obama. These words come to life every time a black girl or boy fills out a college application and every time a young black man or woman crosses the stage in a cap and gown. These words sing every time we decide to talk instead of fight, and they come even more real when we choose to tear down the stereotypical barriers society has built around us. These words represent the collective struggle to become; not to become like white people, but to simply find our own individual truths within our minds, hearts, and souls, and become the dream we wish to live. These words are you, they are me, they are the road to freedom; they are the legacy.