194 Racism and discrimination poems

We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,— This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask. We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but oh the clay is vile Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask!

You know, the white guy In the film version of Raisin In The Sun, Pudgy balding head, Who comes to tell The black family Not to move to the White Chicago suburb. The man who smiles With the knife, Who IS a knife, But fools them for A second, because They’re looking at him The way he expects Them to look at him. Later, as they mop Up the blood, they replay What he said: that he Was elected by his neighbors, Because he’s the guy that Can get his foot in the door, Whipped and rumpled, Like he’s been apologizing Since he popped out of his Mother’s womb, like he’s a Close, personal friend of sorry. He’s sorry now, in his wilted suit. This is the way the knife Gets through the door, and He sits there, as they Think, maybe he ain’t a Knife in sheep clothes, baaa Baaa, baaa; such a foolish-looking, Goofy little white guy. A small part of them, quietly Embarrassed they’re even Thinking that about him. They can barely hold their Manners in check, and that’s His trick, the trick of the knife You don’t see until you’re cut. And the strangest thing About this, the damn thing Is how meek he still looks After he cuts, and cuts again. Dun as a female robin, His tongue slices and whittles. He is singing the song of his Brood; money if you stay, Fire if you come, as they think: How did a white robe, a tinder cross, And goon’s club trot through Their door? A pack of Dobermans Couldn’t have done a neater job, Except that Dobermans of course, never Apologize.

Even though the laws have changed my grandmother still takes us to the back of the bus when we go downtown in the rain.It's easier, my grandmother says, than having white folks look at me like I'm dirt. But we aren't dirt. We are people paying the same fare as other people. When I say this to my grandmother, she nods, says,Easier to stay where you belong. I look around and see the ones who walk straight to the back. See the ones who take a seat up front, daring anyone to make them move. And know this is who I want to be. Not scared like that. Brave like that. Still, my grandmother takes my hand downtown pulls me right past the restaurants that have to let us sit wherever we want now.No need in making trouble, she says.You all go back to New York City but I have to live here.

To be born yellow into a household where the black man rules with his fists  and the white wife  body   livid   with      devotion         hip enough to confuse  trouble with   love    or   whatever   it  was, such the  lucky  one   to come up so unamerican   ,   thankful  one   in whose imagination the  country danger is   so ambient and precise  of   source   it vanishes    and with each departure  more affectionate    machines   panting   to run the dream between  hope    and  habit I wanted to say this more clearly         In what ways  did   watching  your black father beat your white mother   empower   you   as a brown   baby   ?   in  a blue    way      is  there anything   so  cruel   so    crude    as  to say   you felt   each   of your hands   in their  puppet   throats   as they screamed   for help   in   unison   but  only    one  was   hunted  for   room   within the invisible  listener   Only one  could  pray  that      far I wanted to say this more clearly       trustless of a soul  who hadn’t   suffered  he tore  hers  toward him And I arrived as a kind of vengeance, the many versions of war worn raw by their sex, come to be as the treacherous peace of empty pacts    and broken  chessmen were scattered all over the room It’s like being the last person alive

1963 What shall I tell my children who are black Of what it means to be a captive in this dark skin What shall I tell my dear one, fruit of my womb, Of how beautiful they are when everywhere they turn They are faced with abhorrence of everything that is black. Villains are black with black hearts. A black cow gives no milk. A black hen lays no eggs. Bad news comes bordered in black, black is evil And evil is black and devils' food is black… What shall I tell my dear ones raised in a white world A place where white has been made to represent All that is good and pure and fine and decent. Where clouds are white, and dolls, and heaven Surely is a white, white place with angels Robed in white, and cotton candy and ice cream and milk and ruffled Sunday dresses And dream houses and long sleek cadillacs And angel's food is white…all, all…white. What can I say therefore, when my child Comes home in tears because a playmate Has called him black, big lipped, flatnosed and nappy headed? What will he think When I dry his tears and whisper, "Yes, that's true. But no less beautiful and dear." How shall I lift up his head, get him to square His shoulders, look his adversaries in the eye, Confident of the knowledge of his worth, Serene under his sable skin and proud of his own beauty? What can I do to give him strength That he may come through life's adversities As a whole human being unwarped and human in a world Of biased laws and inhuman practices, that he might Survive. And survive he must! For who knows? Perhaps this black child here bears the genius To discover the cure for…Cancer Or to chart the course for exploration of the universe. So, he must survive for the good of all humanity. He must and will survive. I have drunk deeply of late from the foundation Of my black culture, sat at the knee and learned From Mother Africa, discovered the truth of my heritage, The truth, so often obscured and omitted. And I find I have much to say to my black children. I will lift up their heads in proud blackness With the story of their fathers and their fathers Fathers. And I shall take them into a way back time of Kings and Queens who ruled the Nile, And measured the stars and discovered the Laws of mathematics. Upon whose backs have been built The wealth of continents. I will tell him This and more. And his heritage shall be his weapon And his armor; will make him strong enough to win Any battle he may face. And since this story is Often obscured, I must sacrifice to find it For my children, even as I sacrificed to feed, Clothe and shelter them. So this I will do for them If I love them. None will do it for me. I must find the truth of heritage for myself And pass it on to them. In years to come I believe Because I have armed them with the truth, my children And my children's children will venerate me. For it is the truth that will make us free!

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since 1963. Then, my concern was particularly for my own people and this version was written especially for them. I am happy that it has done and is doing its job. However, I want it to be known, that I am not a proponent of the concept of cultural nationalism. I dearly love and am proud of my good, serious, sincere black people, yet at the same time, my concern is with all people of goodwill no matter the color. I make no mystique of blackness. I am a humanist. Indeed, I am a universalist. This truth, I know. The liberation of black people in the United States is tightly linked with the liberation of black people in the far flung diaspora. Further, and more important, the liberation of black and oppressed people all over the world, is linked with the struggles of the workers of the world of every nationality and color against the common oppressors, overlords, and exploiters of their labor. Thus it was only natural that I should write "What Shall We Tell Our Children?" in 1973. I have tried to tell them the facts of life and the truth as I see it: I hope I have succeeded. What shall we tell our children who are black? What shall we tell our children who are white? What shall we tell children of every race and hue? For all children are the children of all of us And all of us bear responsibility for all children What shall we tell them? How can we show them the conditions of their lives So they will see how they can change them? Those who are poverty stricken in the midst of plenty Who must live in rat-infested slums While decent homes stand empty Who go to bed hungry While grocery shelves are heavy Who huddle in tattered rags While racks in stores are sagging Who yearn for a good education But languish in programmed illiteracy Whose intellectual growth is stunted And whose ignorance is compounded While the Academies produce more drones for the labor colony What shall we tell them? How can we show them the conditions of their lives So they will see how they can change them? What shall we tell our children The men and women of the future? We shall tell them the truth It is our bounden duty to tell them the truth It may be painful. We must tell them the truth We may be criticized. We must tell them the truth We may be castigated. We must tell them the truth The truth it shall be, shall show them the conditions of their lives Of a glorified way of life, the greatest in the world Which is not concerned with people, but with profits Not with the well-being of many, but with the interests of a few Not with the welfare and future of the people But only with the profit-making present We shall tell them the truth about a way of life The greatest in the world Where freedom and equality is granted to every man, woman, and child Where everyone, providing he is willing to do what is necessary Can become rich and wealthy by doing others before they do you Where everyone, including you Can acquire life's most important goodies Like split-level houses, with wall-to-wall carpeting completely furnished And two cars and two color T.V.'s And the latest style clothes and minks And schminks and everything! We shall tell them the truth About a way of life The greatest in the world Which rejects the wisdom of its seers and sages And whose culture is dictated and delineated by Violent, vicious, destructive Murderous, unfeeling, crude And quick on the draw supermen Who deem the men and women of the future As expendable and shunt them off to Purposeless death in the name of patria and patriotism Who slaughter the innocents who protest or speak for Peace We shall tell them the truth We shall tell them the truth About a way of life, t

A high-yellow lawyer woman told me I ought to go to Europe to “broaden your per spective.” This happened at a black black cocktail party an oil portrait, Andrew Carnegie, smiling down

When black, men drown. They spend their whole lifetimes justifying the gall of springing the trap, the inconvenience of slouched denim, of coupling beyond romance or aim. All the while, the rising murk edges toward their chins. Hurriedly, someone crafts another scientific tome, a giddy exploration of the curious dysfunction identifying black men first as possible, then as necessary. Elegant equations succumb to a river that blurs quotient and theory, rendering them unreadable, and the overwhelm easily disappears the men, their wiry heads glistening, then gulped. All that’s left is the fathers’ last wisdom, soaked wreckage on silver: Girl, that water ain’t nothing but wet. I’m gon’ be alright. When black men drown, their daughters turn to their mothers and ask What should I do with this misnamed shiver in my left shoulder? How should I dress in public? They are weary of standing at the shore, hands shading their eyes, trying to make out their own fathers among the thousands bobbing in the current. The mothers mumble and point to any flailing that seems familiar. Mostly, they’re wrong. Buoyed by church moans and comfort food of meat and cream, the daughters try on other names that sound oddly broken when pressed against the dank syllables of the fathers’. Drained, with just forward in mind, they walk using the hip of only one parent. They scratch in their sleep. Black water wells up in the wound. When black men drown, their daughters are fascinated with the politics of water, how gorgeously a surface breaks to receive, how it weeps so sanely shut. And the thrashing of hands, shrieking of names:I was Otis, I was Willie Earl, they called me Catfish. Obsessed by the waltzing of tides, the daughters remember their fathers—the scorch of beard electrifying the once-in-a-while kiss, the welts in thick arms, eyes wearied with so many of the same days wedged behind them. When black men drown, their daughters memorize all the steps involved in the deluge. They know how long it takes for a weakened man to dissolve. A muted light, in the shape of a little girl, used to be enough to light a daddy’s way home. When black men drown, their daughters drag the water’s floor with rotting nets, pull in whatever still breathes. They insist their still-dripping daddies sit down for cups of insanely sweetened tea, sniffs of rotgut, tangled dinners based on improbable swine. The girls hope to reacquaint their drowned fathers with the concept of body, but outlines slosh in drift and retreat. The men can’t get dry. Parched, they scrub flooded hollows and weep for water to give them name and measure as mere blood once did. Knocking over those spindly-legged dinette chairs, they interrupt the failed feast and mutter Baby girl, gotta go, baby gotta go, their eyes misted with their own murders. Grabbing their girls, they spit out love in reverse and stumble toward the banks of some river. When black men drown their daughters, the rash act is the only plausible response to the brain’s tenacious mouth and its dare:Yes, yes, open your ashed hands and release that wingless child. Note the arc of the sun-drenched nosedive, the first syllable of the child’s name unwilling from the man’s mouth, the melody of billow that begins as blessed clutch. Someone crouching inside the father waits impatiently for the shutting, the lethargic envelop, and wonders if the daughter’s wide and realizing eye will ever close to loose him. It never will, and the man and his child and the daughter and her father gaze calmly into the wrecked science of each other’s lives. The sun struggles to spit a perfect gold upon the quieting splash. The river pulses stylish circles of its filth around the swallow.

in the backseat of my car are my own sons, still not yet Tamir’s age, already having heard me warn them against playing with toy pistols, though my rhetoric is always about what I don’t like, not what I fear, because sometimes I think of  Tamir Rice & shed tears, the weeping all another insignificance, all another way to avoid saying what should be said: the Second Amendment is a ruthless one, the pomp & constitutional circumstance that says my arms should be heavy with the weight of a pistol when forced to confront death like this: a child, a hidden toy gun, an officer that fires before his heart beats twice. My two young sons play in the backseat while the video of  Tamir dying plays in my head,& for everything I do know, the thing I don’t say is that this should not be the brick and mortar of poetry, the moment when a black father drives his black sons to school & the thing in the air is the death of a black boy that the father cannot mention, because to mention the death is to invite discussion of  taboo: if you touch my sons the crimson that touches the concrete must belong, at some point, to you, the police officer who justifies the echo of the fired pistol; taboo: the thing that says that justice is a killer’s body mangled and disrupted by bullets because his mind would not accept the narrative of  your child’s dignity, of  his right to life, of  his humanity, and the crystalline brilliance you saw when your boys first breathed; the narrative must invite more than the children bleeding on crisp fall days;& this is why I hate it all, the people around me, the black people who march, the white people who cheer, the other brown people, Latinos & Asians & all the colors of   humanity that we erase in this American dance around death, as we are not permitted to articulate the reasons we might yearn to see a man die; there is so much that has to disappear for my mind not to abandon sanity: Tamir for instance, everything about him, even as his face, really and truly reminds me of my own, in the last photo I took before heading off to a cell, disappears, and all I have stomach for is blood, and there is a part of me that wishes that it would go away, the memories,& that I could abandon all talk of making it right & justice. But my mind is no sieve & sanity is no elixir & I am bound to be haunted by the strength that lets Tamir’s father, mother, kinfolk resist the temptation to turn everything they see into a grave & make home the series of cells that so many of my brothers already call their tomb.

The lies I could tell, when I was growing up light-bright, near-white, high-yellow, red-boned in a black place, were just white lies. I could easily tell the white folks that we lived uptown, not in that pink and green shanty-fled shotgun section along the tracks. I could act like my homemade dresses came straight out the window of Maison Blanche. I could even keep quiet, quiet as kept, like the time a white girl said (squeezing my hand),Now we have three of us in this class. But I paid for it every time Mama found out. She laid her hands on me, then washed out my mouth with Ivory soap.This is to purify, she said, and cleanse your lying tongue. Believing her, I swallowed suds thinking they'd work from the inside out.