Response to Those Who Say “Let’s Take It Back to the Good Old Days.”

by Chicago Freedom Rider Reyes of Batey Urbano/ Puerto Rican Cultural Center
spoken at UAW Local 600, Dearborn, Michigan, September 27
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Let’s take it back to the good old days
Yes, let’s take it back to
When niggers and spics knew their place
When chinks were lined up
And placed in camps
When women of color were
Fast whores and tramps
When Hoover bugged Dr. King
By placing microphones in his hotel lamps

Let’s take it back to when
The CIA placed hundreds of Cubans
On a certain bay
And let them be slain
And then say
“O we had nothing to do with it,
It was what they,
What they wanted.”

Let’s take it back to
Commie sympathizer witch hunts
Let’s take it back to black lists
Let’s take it back to government control
Segregation because of pigmentation
Let’s take it back to the control of a islands
Population through sterilization

Let’s take it back to when bullets flew
When Kennedy’s brain was splattered
When Dr. King’s skull was opened
When borther Malcolm’s soul left
Cause of conspiracies buried in files and codes

Let’s take it back to small Black children
Being sprayed on the streets of the U.S.
Attacked by dogs
Spit on like Christ was by bigots

Let’s take it back to chemical
Insecticides used to grow healthy crops
And infected my family

My uncles
My grandparents
Who worked for under minimum wage
Like slaves they labored in the sun
To be infected by cancer

Yes, let’s take it back to the Zoot-Suit Riots
Where America’s Navy raped our women
Beat our men all in the name of defense
Yes let’s take it back to
When the only face of beauty was White
When Latino actors were forced to say they
Were Italian
When Mulatto mixed children said they
Were not Black

Yes. let’s take it back to when the only act
On the big screen that depicted
People of color was about
Sex, violence, or ignorance

Let’s take it back to when Bruce Lee
Was forced to wear a mask because
Of his slanted eyes
And millions yelled out to the Green Hornet

Let’s take it back to when Blacks
Could not play in the NBA
Before Iverson, before Jordan and Zeek
Before Magic, before Dr. J, before the Ice Man
Before Wilt and Russell

Let’s take it back to the good old days
When millions of Americans went
Overseas to fight wars
Only to return in body bags
And because they were not White
Could not be buried in the
Cemeteries that they died to keep

Let’s take it back to when
The government introduced Heroin
To the streets of Harlem
To the streets of Los Angeles

Let’s take it back to when jazz was monkey music
Back to Black face
Uncle Tom, yes massa mentalities

Let’s take it back to when masters raped slaves
When Thomas Jefferson had a
Love affair with one of his own
Let’s take it back to the possibility
That Abraham Lincoln was half Black

Let’s take it back to cowards hiding
Behind sheets setting crosses a blaze

Let’s take it back to governmental testing
On minorities to see the outcome of A.I.D.S.

Let’s take it back to the Treaty of Guadalupe
Forty acres and a mule
Let’s take it back to the Red Man
Being infected by small pox from blankets
Given to him by the U.S. of A.

Let’s take it back to no questions
Everything you see reality
Dogma of the age

Let’s take it back to when women were worth
Nothing, unable to vote, baby-making
Cooking tortillas, greens “just lay there”
As I bust time and time again

Let’s take it back to Vietnam
When men and women bled and bled
and bled

That’s why when I hear people say
“Let’s Take it Back to the Good Old Days,”
I say, FUCK THAT! NO WAY!
The good old days weren’t as
Good as they say