I grew up listening to the blues of Bessie Smith, Billie Holliday, BBKing, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, and Ma Rainey. Some unfamiliar with the black experience and blues might look and listen to these songs and see pain and suffering, or a constant complaint. BUt those from within the black experience see -not a complaint but a critique, not pain but endurance, and not suffering but deliverance. As BBKing once remarked -Blues is like a liniment, good for whatever ails you. So, in recognition of this deeper meaning of the blues, I offer this Veterans day some Blues for the Veteran, particularly those form Vietnam. As a black Vietnam Veteran, entering the military in 1968 in the midst of the student protests, the overwhelming death toll of the black veteran, and the continual frustration with a war that was never declared, and one that we should never have entered. The Vietnam veteran, the only veteran who came home not to parades but protests, not to honor but shame, and not to ...
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