As I read the poems of Poetry and Protest and the autobiographies of each poet it was clear to me the impactful importance of color and identification within ourselves. Most poets recollected their memories finding out about poetry in their early childhood years, and as they continued to explore poetry they discovered poets who looked like them, whose experience was similar; and there was a deep sense of identification that drove their desire to write poetry themselves.
It is fundamental to understand how color can be subjected into a sense of similarity within a group of people who are being marginalized. How reading something that internally satisfies your soul can create a sense of familiarity that may have otherwise been systematically deconstructed if you are part of the oppressed group.
This creation is particularly evident in Thomas Sayers Ellis's poem "The identity repairman" who intensifies his versus with labels that have been passed down generationally from slavery to "freedom". In combination with his writing style I found that the poet Reginald Harris in his poem "New Rules of the Road" gave color an identity that people don't like to read about, the reality of police encountering people of color. Both of these poets discussed the reality of America and particularly the reality of black people who are constantly being profiled by society and police within a country that maintains systematically racist institutions that devalues the life of the person of color.
Hello, the idea of color and identification is interesting, especially when we think about race. Reading your response reminds me of a conversation I had recently in which a friend of mine asked "Who decided that we would take on the colors black, brown and white?" The way in which literal colors are used to represent a people is fascinating, not because of the color themselves, but due to the connotative association we put into the color. Historically, black represents something negative while white is used to represent purity, etc...so how is it that we came to use these same colors/associations to represent people? Your response reminded me on this conversation and the idea that no matter how much I learn, the question never feels answered...if a true answer even exists.
ReplyDeleteHello Daisy, I'm making my first response to your work because I'm trying to respond to someone new every week. Plus, what a great last name ;).
ReplyDeleteYou present two excellent poems which address Professor Abinader's inquiry about the color complex. "The Identity Repairman" made such thorough and concise work of the history of how Black people's color has been manipulated through terminology. It's an excellent poem that doesn't tell the reader what to think but simply lays the facts of the labels out. The starkness of the prose hit as hard as the message that rings through "New Rules of the Road" with the haunting picture of Trayvon Martin opposite it.
Angela's response was stimulated by your writing and recalls a recent conversation about the "color complex" we've been assigned to address. Indeed, how did the use of colors come to identify people? Is race even real? According to Toni Morrison (and science!) it's not. Racism is real. The only race we are is human.
Daisy, you got some great responses here. It would be even more thrilling to go deep into the poems, examining them like we did in class. Yes the tags are limiting in TSE's poem but what about the structure, use of words....go for it!
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