Wednesday
Yesterday I wrote about a Tennessee high school teacher that was fired for teaching a Ta-Nehisi Coates’s essay “The First White President” (about Donald Trump) and a spoken word poem by Kyla Jenée Lacey. I tracked down the video of Lacey delivering her poem (here) and a transcript of it (here) to get a better sense of what was going on in the course.
Lacey’s poem appears to have been composed between 2005-2008—in the latter years of the Geroge W. Bush administration—since there are references to Hurricane Katrina and to Bush cabinet officials. Then again, although it doesn’t mention Obama, it may be from 2009 as the allusion to Sandra Bullock could well be to The Blind Side. (Lacey is objecting to white savior movies since she also mentions Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds.) In any event, the poem appears as timely as ever.
Which is disconcerting since often it seems like nothing ever changes. Thankfully, the Black Lives Matter movement has made us more aware of the issues involved. Thanks to Black Lives Matter, at least awareness of the issues has grown. Oh, and we can also thank poets like Lacey and to teachers who share their work with their classes.
We live in a society where many Whites, when they feel uncomfortable around Blacks, call the cops. Increasingly, GOP legislatures are also passing laws for punishing teachers who teach uncomfortable facts about our history. Sometimes conservatives don’t feel they even need laws, as in the case of Matthew Hawn’s firing. While they complain constantly about “cancel culture,” they have no compunction about canceling people they disagree with.
Lacey is aware that she’s making her audience uneasy, even asking rhetorically at one point, “Am I making you uncomfortable?” African American poet Lucille Clifton often used to describe her own poetry as comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.
But making audiences uncomfortable is dangerous business. Hawn forfeited his white privilege when he called it out and paid the price.
White Privilege
By Kyla Jenée Lacey
We learned your French
We learned your English, your Dutch, your Spanish, your Portuguese
you learned our nothing, you called us stupid
that’s white privilegeand I’m sure it probably hurts for you to hear those two words
kind of like gunshots and explosions
from those commissioned to protect you whisking past your ears
what is white privilege?
it is only five decades of legal acknowledgment expected to correct 400 years of white transgression
it is crack versus cocaine, blacks receiving almost 20% longer sentences for the same
exact offenses
or like, for instance, a black man without a record is less likely to geta job than a white felon
or maybe it’s because we’re lazy and we don’t work hard enough, like what the fuck? 400 years in the same fields literally is an incredible resume builder.
it is Katrina answering the government’s prayers of eugenics
Dick Cheney going fishing the next day
Condoleezza on a shopping spree
Bush in San Diego
But Kanye is the one you call crazy cuz like
it only took the USA two days to get aid to Asia but five for FEMA to get to Canal Street and Esplanade
it is the only one black kid who beat the shit out of the odds
but only thanks to Michelle Pfeiffer and the white shadow and Sandra Bullock so now we all can make it
It is only time thousands of white people are cheering for a black kid to win is in a stadium
it is you looking at me crazy if I told you to go back to Europe even though we didn’t have a say, and your great-grandparents came here voluntarily
it is you, all of sudden having a problem with immigration, like, this isn’t even your nation
how the hell do you discover something that wasn’t even missing to begin with?
you’ve Columbus’ed our traditions
got white girls twerking in high definition with multi colored nails and purple hair but it was ghetto when we did it
Oh am I making you uncomfortable?
try a cramped slave ship
but wait, slavery is over now,
it’s just called the prison system
cuz like you’re not racist cuz you don’t
use the ‘n’ word,
but y’all use n*ggas everydaywhat is white privilege?
It is the acceptance of bombs over Baghdad but not over Boston
it is European history being taught as a major and African as an elective
it is learning about my people only 28 days like I’m not black every fucking secondit is every white boy who wanted to f*ck my brains out not because I’m pretty,
but because I’m pretty for a black girlit is people saying that black people destroy neighborhoods but forgetting that white people destroyed continents
it is every time i have to bring up my plight some white man is telling me that I’m crazy
but is kind enough to praise my English
or say that we are all given the same opportunities
when he has a family history of wealth
and I don’t even know my family history at allit is the justification of police brutality like what did that person do? well I’m sure it doesn’t hurt as much
when the victim doesn’t look like youit is throwing out a qualified applicant cuz
their name sounded too African Americanit is Newports being imported into black communities but black boys exported for weed
it is big plastic asses being called fat when we naturally have them
it is an Australian woman as the new classic of rap musicit is everyone who hears this poem,
and dismisses all this truth as just spitthat is white privilege