Black Poetry Tuesdays (July 11, 2023 Edition): "Primer for Blacks” by Gwendolyn Brooks

The week’s poem is a piece from Gwendolyn Brooks, a Black female writer, and poet who was the first Black poet to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1950. Gwendolyn was also the first Black woman to hold the role of Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position now referred to as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. She served as the Illinois poet laureate for 32 years.

Gwendolyn’s work is well-known for being steeped in her experiences and identities as a Black woman in the United States, with a unique ability to be militant and steadfast in her use of language and imagery while drawing in white folx who were fearful of the writers, poets, and artists that were a part of her generation of Black voices post-Harlem Renaissance.

The following piece is called “Primer for Blacks.” It is an interesting study on Blackness as a singular identity but also a view into how even if you have an ounce of Afro-Carribean blood in your DNA, you are still Black in the eyes of whiteness. It’s a great piece about reconciling one’s identities at the intersection of Blackness as well as anti-black self-hatred.

Primer for Blacks

Blackness

is a title,

is a preoccupation,

is a commitment Blacks

are to comprehend—

and in which you are

to perceive your Glory.

The conscious shout

of all that is white is

“It’s Great to be white.”

The conscious shout

of the slack in Black is

‘It’s Great to be white.’

Thus all that is white

has white strength and yours.

The word Black

has geographic power,

pulls everybody in:

Blacks here—

Blacks there—

Blacks wherever they may be.

And remember, you Blacks, what they told you—

remember your Education:

“one Drop—one Drop

maketh a brand new Black.”

        Oh mighty Drop.

______And because they have given us kindly

so many more of our people

Blackness

stretches over the land.

Blackness—

the Black of it,

the rust-red of it,

the milk and cream of it,

the tan and yellow-tan of it,

the deep-brown middle-brown high-brown of it,

the “olive” and ochre of it—

Blackness

marches on.

The huge, the pungent object of our prime out-ride

is to Comprehend,

to salute and to Love the fact that we are Black,

which is our “ultimate Reality,”

which is the lone ground

from which our meaningful metamorphosis,

from which our prosperous staccato,

group or individual, can rise.

Self-shriveled Blacks.

Begin with gaunt and marvelous concession:

YOU are our costume and our fundamental bone.

     All of you—

     you COLORED ones,

     you NEGRO ones,

those of you who proudly cry

     “I’m half INDian”—

     those of you who proudly screech

     “I’VE got the blood of George WASHington in MY veins”

     ALL of you—

           you proper Blacks,

     you half-Blacks,

     you wish-I-weren’t Blacks,

     Niggeroes and Niggerenes.

     You.

You can learn more about Gwendolyn here.

To HR Directors, Boards of Directors, and Senior Leaders: Don't forget to take your pills.

Image description: A meme. In the upper half of the image, a white hand is holding a medication bottle. The bottle is labeled "Hard to swallow pills." Below that statement is, "Instructions: Take one (1) without water as needed." The lower half of the image shows the white hands from above with three pills resting in the palm of the left hand. The caption reads, "HR should not have unchecked control and the final say over the equity and inclusion efforts in any company, no matter how much the senior leadership team and Board of Directors want them to."

[Image description: A meme. In the upper half of the image, a white hand is holding a medication bottle. The bottle is labeled "Hard to swallow pills." Below that statement is, "Instructions: Take one (1) without water as needed." The lower half of the image shows the white hands from above with three pills resting in the palm of the left hand. The caption reads, "HR should not have unchecked control and the final say over the equity and inclusion efforts in any company, no matter how much the senior leadership team and Board of Directors want them to."]

Black Poetry Tuesdays (July 4, 2023 Edition): "On Being Brought from Africa to America" by Phillis Wheatley

The week’s poem is a piece from Phillis Wheatley, a Black woman whose poetic works came to national and international attention while enslaved by a white family in Boston, Massachusetts, at the age of seven. Phillis became one of the most prominent poets in pre-19th-century literature as an enslaved domestic worker, and she spoke of her experiences in chattel slavery and the heaviness of her circumstances.

The following piece is entitled "On Being Brought from Africa to America." It is one of her heavier pieces, exploring the forced assimilation of enslaved Africans into Christianity.

On Being Brought from Africa to America

' Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
'Their colour is a diabolic die.'
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

You can learn more about Phillis here.

This Week's Opening Thought: July 3, 2023

This week's opening thought: It is wild to me how often people of pallor respond with vitriol toward melanated folx who don’t want to consort with them all the time or become their lifelong friends.

Who said I had to be your friend or anything outside of a surface-level colleague or neighbor, especially if I’m navigating life in ways that protect my mental, physical, and emotional well-being after a lifetime of lived and generational harm at the hands of white supremacy? Why are you not willing to digest and understand this?

Who said it was mandatory for me to be the Nigger Jim to your Huckleberry Finn?

Did I miss the memo?

And how are you mad that I’m exercising the right not to foster a close or intimate relationship with someone I don’t want a close or intimate relationship with? We teach children early on that they don’t have to be close friends or share themselves with everyone who “submits a request.” This doesn’t become null and void once you enter adulthood. Y'all know that, right?

Make it make sense.

Something inherently built into whiteness as a concept and societal construct of control leads many members of the unmelanated masses to seek to create a homegrown United Colors of Benetton advertisement for themselves. There is a mentality in white Western culture of treating the melanated masses like a curiosity, a collectible, a knick-knack. This mentality is unconscious and connected to the original roots of anti-Blackness, colonialism, and racism, primarily the belief that Black people, Indigenous people, melanated people, are property or inanimate objects and not human beings, and it is still a current and present danger to the Global Majority folx who are living and existing in white spaces. Because many white people don’t want to acknowledge or unpack this, there are way too many white people who seem to be less interested in building relationships with melanated folx centered on the lifelong work of breaking down the barriers and phobias embedded in the white supremacy and racism they have lived their life deeply enmeshed in, and more intent on collecting us like Pokemon. Many melanated people recognize this, so we do what we can to minimize placing ourselves in conversations and situations that allow the unmelanated masses to add the Blue-Eyes White Dragon they see before them to their Yu-Gi-Oh deck.

It’s 2023. After witnessing the intentional erasure of history, the repealing of rights and protections, and the year-by-year escalations in hate crimes in the United States, with all of these events mostly perpetrated by white bodies or those who long to appease white society, how can you consider yourself a “good” person and not understand that maybe your people and the power they wield is a persistent danger to Black, Brown, Indigenous communities, AAPI communities, and Global Majority folx in general? And that maybe we can’t be as close with you as you’d like to force us to be because your power, privilege, and positionality are potential trauma triggers? And that maybe you need to take the time and energy needed to build legitimate long-term trust and faith in any potential relationships with the melanated people you want in your life who do not have white supremacist ideology on their side? And that maybe the way you go about trying to “connect” with melanated folx is a little creepy, forced, and filled with a certain level of privilege and power that denotes you believe you deserve to have me as a part of your “collection” and that you don’t have to earn my friendship?

I don’t know.

I’m just spitballing here.

I just wanted to give you something to think about before you pulled out that Pokeball.

On Wedding Websites and Rulings of Hate

This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Lorie Smith, a "Christian" graphic designer who wanted the right to discriminate against same-sex couples seeking her services. This ruling went in her favor despite a Colorado law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation, race, gender, and other protected characteristics. Smith's argument? That the Colorado law violated her free speech rights.

The conservative U.S. Supreme Court agreed with her.

How did this law violate her "freedom of speech?" Your guess is as good as mine, seeing how no one was twisting her arm to force her to take jobs or be hateful.

Lorie's raggedy ass could've politely declined the request, stating she was busy or unavailable, but she didn't. I'm not saying this move is the right or best way to handle things because it would still be a hateful move, but it wouldn't be as confrontational and escalated as this situation became. Do you know how many white people I've encountered who dislike me and my people but decide their vitriol for me isn't worth escalating, so they passively opt out of things? Way more than you'd think. I know members of LGBTQIA+ communities face similar situations. The couple who sought out Lorie's services could've moved on, likely knowing that there was an underlying current of hate to their request being declined but maybe not feeling like this battle was worth escalating (sadly, many of us have to pick and choose which battles to fight and when).

Lorie didn't have to make it an openly hateful thing with these potential clients, but she did. Lorie didn't have to be aggressively homophobic but chose to be. But Lorie was worried about her "freedom of speech" being taken from her. Real talk?

Lorie wasn't worried about her freedom of speech. Lorie was worried about decency infringing on what she believes is her freedom to hate others "in the name of the Lord."

And now every hateful, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, racist, bigoted, faux Christian business owner in the United States will refuse to serve countless communities because the U.S. Supreme Court has declared they have the right to do so.

You have the right to have your beliefs until your beliefs are constantly wielded as clubs of hatred, bigotry, and white supremacy that harm or murder others. Then they aren't beliefs anymore. They're hate crimes.

The U.S. Supreme Court thinks otherwise.