
This poem was written by Reporting Fellow Jermaine Ervin Jr. as a complement to his project Black Education Beyond U.S. Borders.
Fate vs. Probability
It’s crazy to think that in a moment of time, through a setting of chaos, destiny relying on probability, the chances of what boat you ended up on would change the story for all your bloodline to come. A community separated like Pangea installed with different languages and information, fighting for different nations under different circumstances. Reflections of their homelands and traditions morphed into what is taught as “right.” Left with the dawning thought of the ripple effect of probability. Fighting the label of their skin. Different trauma, same indifferences. Different nations, same color of skin. We fight for the information of our ancestors not because they owe it to us, but because with one slight difference in events and a roulette wheel of possibilities we could have been raised in a different pair of shoes looking through a different lens with the same emptiness we seek to indulge with knowledge.