The American Boogyman

The American boogeyman has a stiff neck, 

And a pumped up chest. 

It carries a rifle on its shoulder, 

Brandishes firearms like all the rest. 

It has fear in its eyes and hate in its heart. 

It sees itself as above the laws of a nation it wants to tear apart. 

“In early colonial America, firearms were the armaments of white upperclassman power and a benefit that upper-class whites bestowed upon lower-class whites to separate them from people of color… Scholars of gun culture in the United States often assume that inclusion of armed white militias in the Second Amendment reflected eighteenth century tensions between the need for national defense and fears of government tyranny… However, legal historians such as Carl T. Bogus, Robert Cottrol, and Raymond Diamond place white anxieties about control of Black populations at the center of these debates as well.” (Metzl 2019)

The American boogeyman is given the right to terrorize 

It has been afforded the privilege to dehumanize and demoralize. 

The second amendment gives it the right to fear monger and destabilize. 

A terrifying sight to behold, 

accompanied by a history it doesn’t want told. 

“So called Slave Codes on states such as Georgia, Mississippi, and North Carolina banned gun ownership by slaves and free Blacks because, as the Georgia Supreme Court put it in 1848 in an argument that presaged the infamous Dred Scott v. Sanford decision “persons of color have never been recognized here as citizens; they are not entitled to bear arms” Around this same time, the newly admitted state of Florida passed a law that allowed white citizen patrols to search the homes of “Blacks, both free and slave and confiscate arms held therein” (Metzl, 2019) 

American boogeyman let me be. 

You don’t have the right to beat me into the ranks of the hegemony 

Your rifles and your guns are weapons to stop me from being free, 

They are not tools in the fight for democracy. 

Metzl, J. M. (2019). Dying of whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland. Basic Books.