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Monday – Martin Luther King Day
I will be far from the only one noting the terrible irony of a white supremacist being sworn in as president on Martin Luther King’s birthday. For me, however, there’s one silver lining, which I’ve had to do some deep internal diving to discover.
That silver lining comes in the form of increased understanding. The frustration I have felt watching Donald Trump escape accountability time after time—and seeing him be reelected even after staging a coup—would not have been unfamiliar to King. But it is new to me.
Why have I been blind? Well, my privileged white background has allowed me to think that the rule of law applies in the United States. People of color in this country, by contrast, have had no such illusions, and they have been trying to awaken me for years through literature. Which is to say, through the poetry of Langston Hughes, Lucille Clifton, and Audre Lorde; through the fiction of Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison; through the plays of August Wilson, Lorraine Hansberry, Imamu Baraka; and many, many others. Their shouting has finally managed to penetrate.
To be fully human, it is important for me to see this reality. But there’s something even more at stake for me. I have five grandchildren of color—one Asian, four Afro-Caribbean—and if I am to support them as fully as I want to, I must understand what they will be going through. My sons and daughters-in-law, in ways that are age appropriate, are doing all they can to alert them to the reality they will be facing. But it will not be easy.
I’ve had one professional relationship with a noted poet of color who tried to awaken me to her reality. For years I was fortunate to have Lucille Clifton as a colleague at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. I admired her immensely and taught her poetry in my classes, but occasionally I was aware of her frustrations with me. I’ve written about a poem in which she had me in mind (I know because I asked her and she confirmed it). In “note to self,” starting off with a Baraka quote (“I refuse to be judged by white men”), she writes
or defined. and i see
that even the best believe
they have that right,
believe that
what they say i mean
is what i mean
as if words only matter in the world they know,
as if when i choose words
i must choose those
that they can live with
She follows up by noting that she has been called on to deal with racism experienced by our students of color that their white professors were blind to:
as if i have not reached
across our history to touch,
to soothe on more than one
occasion
Now, when Lucille compiled a collection of her poems, she chose not to include this one. Perhaps she feared it was too personal a complaint. (It of course appears in the complete collection of her poems put together after her death.) I, however, made a point to always teach “note to self” in my Intro to Literature classes, talking about my own learning curve.
But whatever progress I made, it took the helplessness I have felt in the Trump era to make the next step. So this is what it feels not to have power. The realization is making me a better grandfather.
Martin Luther King is inspirational in the way that he refused to give up, even in the face of tremendous odds and heartbreaking reversals. We can use this quirk in the calendar as a symbolic reminder that he wouldn’t have given up in the face of Trump’s reelection. As the gospel hymn-turned-protest song puts it,
We are soldiers in the army.
We have to fight although we have to cry.
We’ve got to hold up the bloodstained banner.
We’ve got to hold it up until we die!My mother was a soldier.
She had her hand on the gospel plow.
But one day she got old; couldn’t fight anymore.
She said, “I’ll stand here and fight anyhow.”
I conclude today’s post with a poem of Lucille’s that I have always admired. She often liked to say that her job as a poet was “to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable,” so here’s a case of her doing the latter:
whose side are you on?
By Lucille Clifton
the side of the busstop woman
trying to drag her bag
up the front steps before the doors
clang shut i am on her side
i give her exact change
and him the old man hanging by
one strap his work hand folded shut
as the bus doors i am on his side
when he needs to leave
i ring the bell i am on their side
riding the late bus into the same
someplace i am on the dark side always
the side of my daughters
the side of my tired sons
I am on the side of my granddaughters and my grandsons, and I am willing to undergo any education I still need to be the support they need.
