Tag: #blacklivesmatter

Black Deaths

July 17, 2018.Reading time 3 minutes.

It may go without saying
Upon seeing my brown face
That I will always
And emphatically insist that
Black Lives Matter.
I have heard the arguments
And listened patiently to the counterpoint
Knowing I am neither heard
Nor understood, in the wind of the flatulent rebuttal,
“all lives….”
But really, this isn’t about black lives
It is actually about black deaths
and how they have never really mattered
in the white man’s world.
The strident calls for action
Coming from full lips and carved bodies
Dipped in golden, umber and ebony skin,
Their cry is not even a whisper in the shriveled rose pink ears
Of this ongoing colonial experiment.
In a history of proximity to whiteness,
Black deaths are unremarkable, unmarked, unnamed
Unknown and entirely unheard.

Black deaths…
like so much spoiled grain
shoveled off the deck of a boat and disposed of mid ocean
Black deaths…
from being flogged as beasts of burden
neither mourned nor memorialized
Black deaths…
that satisfy white fetishes for sexual heroism or conquest
Black deaths…
in burning crosses and exploding churches
Black deaths…
in segregated wars defending global white imperial oppression
Black deaths…
in the name of white science, the benefit from which black bodies are excluded
Black deaths…
in systems of servitude and serving time
Black deaths…
from weapons kept legal so white entitlement can lethalize fear
Black deaths…
in weekly hashtags that normalize the terror
and make suffering a brand
Black deaths…
nations, cities, hospitals, mothers, babies…

In these ways and many more
Even as you read this
Black deaths have not mattered
Black pain has not mattered
Black feeling has not mattered
Black lives have not mattered,
Because black humanity does not matter
…cannot matter
…is not matter
Beyond being one of the “master’s” most versatile tools
Used to inscribe the outline of a white world
Giving contrast and context to the caricature of empty racial lies.
How could black lives matter
When black does not have death,
but is merely erased.

–ALD

I offered this poem as part of a workshop at the recent Wild Goose Festival in North Carolina.  The workshop (God is the Fact That…: Living to Die) explores the ways in which personal theologies about death may provide bridges across spiritual and cultural barriers.

#unraced, #eraced

October 29, 2016.Reading time 3 minutes.

A Poem in (the) Twitter Verse*

Racism is not just about white people and non-white people hating. It is about who has “race”.

In the United States, there are “un-raced” bodies and “e-raced” bodies.

E-raced means there’s a social algorithm that makes your color, culture, religion and customs an opaque burden.

Un-raced means your color, culture, religion and customs are invisible and weightless.

If you are un-raced, sometimes you turn around to see racism in the distance, and you hate it.

If you are e-raced, you are the physical location of racism. You see it in the mirror, and you hate it.

If you are un-raced, you hear about shootings and poverty and say “what a shame.”

If you are e-raced, you wonder if you are next, or if someone in your family just died.

Most white people in the United States are un-raced.

Most everyone who is not white in the US is e-raced.

The Bundy family and their accomplices are free because they are un-raced.

The Alt-Right wants to protect the exclusive white privilege of being un-raced.

White liberals who write songs to speak for brown mouths are un-raced.

The Movement for Black Lives is a demand for an end to being e-raced.

Black youths being killed by police or each other are being e-raced.

Black conservatives being thrown out of Republican rallies as thugs are also being e-raced.

Muslim women having their scarves ripped off their heads are being e-raced.

Latino/a/xs being told to speak English are being e-rased.

The tribes protesting at Standing Rock are being e-raced…again.

I have never experienced the United States in an un-raced body.

Every day I wake up to news that reminds me how often and how easily my body is e-raced.

America, seen from inside an e-raced body is a nightmare.

No government or President alone can solve the tragedy of the un-raced vs. the e-raced.

Regardless of how you are “raced”, don’t vote for an ideology…vote to be seen.

The goal is not to be un-raced or e-raced.

The Goal is learning to share what it means to be human-raced.

-ALD

 

*This “poem” originally appeared line-by-line on Twitter