by Sam Baker
When i think of racist, i see a
capital R that isn’t there
and a mass of article words,
a Racist
the Blacks
a Lesbian a
Retard a
Christian the
Muslims,
adjectives contorted into nouns,
traits becoming names,
i think of end white silence but stopping to listen,
silence is violence but assimilation slicing at the
tongue, the black albums my father bought still
wrapped in plastic to this day on display, i think
of touching black hair without asking because
the pain…
b..because the pain is…
the pain is…
b..because the pain is…
i think of hard Rs and soft As,
lips thick and thin, words
weaponized and reclaimed,
the inability to accept our skin’s connotations,
i cannot forget about racist each time i find that black and
african american are a decision this country hasn’t made, i
think about the 60s and unseeing race when our skin and
our content are simply inseparable, my childhood days
were full of I had a dream s, though frankly, i’d be damned
if we even fall asleep and wasn’t mlk more tired than
hungry and how is it that malcolm x never made
my grade school textbooks, was he such a thoughtcrime, and somehow, we all know exactly what michelle obama means by Becoming because the pain…
b..because the pain is...
i think of calling broken things ghetto
and Joe Biden’s interview response
“poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids,” i
see the black boy who shared my pencils with me in second
grade being taught that he’d work for me
someday, that if he wasn’t on a cereal box, he’d struggle to buy
one and he sat there as he heard that the white students misbehaving were “acting black,” he’d go home to televisions
with white basketball team owners and their black mvps,
my intellectual dreams were seldom apparent
to the black boy next to me
b..because the pain
the pain…
the pain is…
b..because the pain…
the pain…
the Pain...
and through the eyes of a presidential candidate, poor and
white are direct antonyms, we are constantly dividing one
nation indivisible into sub sufficient factions, have i forgotten
to mention races other than black and white, and i swore i
saw Mr. President counting his teeth the day
Bruce Springsteen called him un-American,
clarence clemons’s saxophone shrilling
through the border walls, i watched them tumble under the weight of his breath, a torch waving atop Lady Liberty, Born to Run,
when i think of racist,
i see July smoke
dusting over the month prior —a stagnant blue
so i shut my eyes and
banish millions to the
darkness I fail to lift—
About the Author
Growing up in Louisville Kentucky, with what is known as the 9th street divide (a street with skyscrapers on one side and very impoverished housing on the other), Baker has witnessed severe income inequality, cultural appropriation, and some of the most negative impacts of consumerism. This poem, 'racist,' fits the theme, 'They Stole our Love' because it focusses on the historical deprivation of black voices specifically in the US. Baker reflects on white allies of the BLM movement being told to listen in order to learn and appreciate, and to speak in order to provide space for marginalized voices.
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