who?

In Of Poetry and Protest Quraysh Ali Lansana's poem "statement on the killing of patrick dorismond" stuck out to me for many reasons. First, before even reading it I noticed it was in all lower case including the title. I also noticed the lines are very uniform, balanced, structured meticulously in the shape of a box, rectangle. Second I had to look up who patrick dorismond is and learned that he was a black man shot and killed by an undercover cop in New York City in 2000. He is also the younger brother of a reggae artist named Bigga Haitian.

Quraysh breaks down (for the lack of the correct term) in parenthesis what the euphemisms are suggesting. I thought this was a clever style because it forces the reader to immediately take on a double consciousness that I think is often assumed by people of color automatically. From what I understand about double consciousness and I believe it's a term coined by W.E.B. Dubois, regarding how people of color are forced to see themselves in two social perspectives, who they are in their communities, and who they are in the Anglo dominant narrative.

Naturally I tried to break down the euphemisms without looking at the words offered in parenthesis and I didn't quite get the same effect the poem creates by adding the words for me. When I think of hoodlum for instance my stereotyping brain wouldn't assume a cop or pig, which is interesting because the dictionary definition is "a person who engages in crime and violence." I think this poem ultimately begs the reader to think critically about who is the actual "bad guy" in this case. This reverses the stereotypes we commonly see in mainstream media around Black bodies being inherently violent, or drug dealers. The poem also uses historic verbiage like "junglebunny" or "coon" to explore contemporary racially charged state sanctioned violence.

I think similarly the poem called on continuing to struggle for Mumia Abu Jamal by Devorah Major offers a second viewpoint of the "who". I also noticed the poem was in all lower case including the title, which is something I'm not entirely sure the reason for other than aesthetically, however I'm sure there's something more to it. Actually, I'm thinking of the stereotype of Black people being "loud" which is often a way to oppress people and silence their experience. And the reason I bring that up here is that the lower casing of the words feels like the exact opposite of being loud, where I'd expect to see ALL CAPS or "!" to read shouting or "loud" expression.

I really like how Devorah's poem (to me) represents "the struggle" of being Black in white America however the poem itself, line by line, is a struggle. Grappling with what it doesn't want to be, what the poet won't make it about, it courses through it's own resistance finding empowerment in it's very purpose and finally riding on hope built up by it's own strength.