I don’t know how to talk about a lot of things so I usually end up talking about poetry. Poetry freezes a moment, looks deeply at the past and present contained in one interaction, shares a story that is not just of one individual in one time period, but a collective experience spanning generations. Poetry weaves perspectives and intentions into a more complete narrative, reflects what we say all the time as individuals and society without knowing it.
Poetry is especially important in moments where we wonder how a police officer can kill an unarmed man on camera with only the videographer facing punishment. These actions, these collective responses, are rooted in millions of everyday moments where people are complicit in social and political systems of thought that place the value of some human beings above others. I look at how I move through the world, ways that I subtlety, casually invalidate the experiences of others. I try to see the fear in me that was in Daniel Pantaleo, Darren Wilson, so that I will NEVER let it drown out voices of people who are expressing the pain my actions cause, directly or indirectly. I try to engage with it, take away its power, so it will never make me think that because I was born into a certain amount of privilege, I am more deserving than others of basic human rights.
It would be so comfortable, believing that these officers are just outliers, or that thousands of protesters just have a martyr complex, or that this is somehow not a symptom of a deeply problematic relationship we have with race in this country. So I turn to poetry for the truths that are uncomfortable to hear, and that must be unbelievably discouraging to live from day to day. I turn to poetry to hear the perspectives mainstream media tells me aren’t credible, despite their lived experiences. I try to learn and to talk about these things, because I do not want to look back in years to come at this incredibly important moment, and remember how fear kept me ignorant and silent.
http://www.pbs.org/…/using-poetry-uncover-moments-lead-rac…/
http://www.vidaweb.org/reports-from-the-field-white-people…/