In “D.R.O.N.E.: Destruction of Racism, Oppressors, Naysayers, and Enemies,” author Tyreise D. Swain, uses contemporary and historical events, poetic prose, and a critical mind to recap the confusion and injustice that the Black community has faced since 2020. Swain begins with defiance:
You can lock-up my body, but I’m still content. Justice, is really ”Just-Us,” not meant for the ”Common Men.” Now I understand what Common meant, every time I heard Common vent. But that’s past tense. Back then, my mind’s eye was blurred, and it didn’t make sense. Now the future of today’s mind is super-intense. Some are superbly smart, high-strung, mentally ill, or dense. And these minds desecrate academic grounds, pull triggers until the shells are spent.
Here Swain evokes the name of Chicago rapper and actor Common who has used his position to advocate for social justice issues in Black communities. Swain then reflects on his life, noting that “Back then” he was “blurred” and life “didn’t make sense.” However, now older, his mind is “super-intense.” Yet, he notes that even some of the smartest people get caught up in the violence of their community and “pull triggers until the shells are spent.” Meaning, that they resort to violence and crime to overcoming the systemic issues plaguing their lives.
Critiquing the hypocrticial nature of and the role of money in politics, Swain offers his critique of America’s love of capitalism, democracy, and guns:
Then congressional-minds scream: ”GUN LAWS,” pretending to prevent, senseless acts of violence from the weapons ”They” invent; weapons ”They” circumvent into the hands of past, mass shooters, who were, non-felons, but upstanding citizens. My, the stakes are pivotal, and the rising collateral damage of Chicago is pitiful; but the puppet-master is no longer subliminal; yet here we sit, and they call us ”criminals.”
Here, Swain is arguing that the while people like him are locked away or struggling with surviving on a daily basis, politicians, backed by money from gun corporations, fail to pass laws to protect people from gun violence. “They,” the politicians “scream: ‘GUN LAWS,’ yet these same politicians “invent weapons” – denoting the gun companies’ role in supporting these same politicians with donations, which leads to more guns on the street and more gun violence. Yet, as Swain points out, he and other Black people are called the “criminals.”
Swain continues to demonstrate the hypocritical nature of crime and criminal jutice by noting how Black men are disproportionally the victims of police violence:
I once watched a man walk, and breath. The night-sky was gleaming with stars over the land of the free. But no-one told this gentleman that this will be, the last time he existed, or would see. Red and blue LEDs’ flashed, and he’s told to freeze. ”Don’t move boy! Don’t even sneeze!” My peers, please allow me to use proper diction. This story has to be carefully told, It isn’t fiction. You see, according to the men in uniform, in the reports they’ve written, said the man fit the description.
Swain uses rhyming and rhythm to tell his narrative and critique Black encounters with police, similar to how hip-hop artists like Public Enemy and NWA. As literary theorist Michael Eric Dyson put it, “hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history, and race. At its best, hip hop gives voice to marginal black youth we are not used to hearing from on such topics.” To illuminate how Black people see their social landscape as perpetually unfree from police harassment, Swain critiques the urban environment by evoking the “land of the free.” Yet, the victim was not truly free—he walks the streets always vulnerable to the police. When confronted by the police because he “fit the description” of a suspect, it would be “the last time he existed, or would see.”
Swain continues that “From the outside looking in- just my opinion- It seems to be about the depths of the hue of skin, and guilty-plea-convictions.” Policing, in this telling, exists to incarcerate Black people. As Swain notes:
P.O.L.I.C.E. = P.rivate 0.rganizations L.oose I.n C.ommunities E.verywhere. And ”They” say: ”They’ re scared.” Your mission statement claims: ”To Protect and Serve.” Not Punish and Enslave or Instill Fear; nor exaggerate and fabricate evidence, to sentence us to a hundred years. I guess it’s hard to look at the ugly truth, ”Do as I say, not as I do.” Your badge means: ”To Uphold The Law.” Yet, you break it, too.
In this way, Swain adds to the long history of Black activists critiquing their lived experiences as ones perpetually under threat from racist policing. The “P.O.L.I.C.E.” exists to “Punish and Enslave,” even if their stated mission is “To Protect and Serve.” The difference between these two mission statements is the color of ones’ skin. As Swain states:
What is Right or Fact, is illusory in the Provincial Courts. Guilty until proven Innocent, in the arena where Law is more like a sport. Adjudged by the demi-god in the black cape, who sits and hands down punishments that are symbolic to a rope. We are lynched by modern-day civic duty. Such emotional pain as I watch corruption infect modern-day beauty. Devastating pains occur because life isn’t fair. The key-part to a person’s survival, is how they prepare.
In this way, Swain, like many other incarcerated authors and Black activists, argues that the criminal justice system is arbitrary, or a “sport” where people of color are judge guilty until proven innocent. Maybe a historical or contextual quote here from someone like Simon Balto on the ubiquity of racial violence in policing?
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