BET

"She's dying hard up there in that hospital . . . won't last through the night."
"Then why tell her anything?"
"We've got to see the positive things, too."
"Do they measure up to us filling jails and prisons, being drug addicts, alcoholics, thugs . . ."
"But she's mama and  had to be daddy, too, when we couldn't help ourselves."
"Then she has to be 'sponsible for what we become --"

"We can't send here off as the negative of all those things called positive and beautiful in people with powerful cultures . . ."
"And when she was a child who taught her all that stuff that she passed on to us?"
"Stuff that's been messing up our minds for all these centuries because we haven't had leaders and teachers to teach us a strong culture as leaders and teachers do in other ethnic groups."
"Who always say that they the major influence in our communities?"
"Preachers say that they are."
"And we been sittin' there in churches like zombies, questioning nothing . . ."

"I know you're not saying that we don't have free will . . ."
"We can talk about that some other time.  Right now she laying up there dying -- black wit' a blonde wig on and lips painted all red --"
"Yeah, and we don't want to bury her in any of that, passing it on to some weak-minded girls coming to the funeral."
"So who we gonna tell her shot her?  That's the one thang that can send her off in peace.  Imagine what it be lak to be dying and not knowing who shot you and why."
"It can be that we all had something to do with it -- in our treatment of her.  She's mama, we owe her."
"Bet."