“Dear Black America — We are many things, aren’t we? We are hair. God yes, we are hair. And song. And memory. We are a language so deep it has no need for words. And we are words that feint, dart, and wheel like birds. Like James Brown, we feel good. Like Fannie Lou Hamer, we are sick and tired. We are fearsome. We are fire. Like God, we are that we are.”
These words from the poem, Dear Black America, by Tracy K. Smith are the opening words of a very provocative interview with Krista Tippett in her podcast On Being on May 27, 2021. In this year and a half of the pandemic, which as a side effect brought forward the depth of systemic racism and the depth of human alienation from our other-than-human world, Smith called together a group of 20 poets of colour to reflect out loud on the meaning and the impact of a barrage of reminders of the racial inequities of the world in which we live.
Also in the interview was poet Michael Kieber-Diggs who offered a piece of his writing about the experience of the last year and a half.
“It wasn’t that I wanted to let go and sink. It was that it was hard to keep my head above water and carry my stone at the same time. I wanted a place to rest. Okay? I wanted to float, just for a little while.”
The podcast offers a fresh and searing look at the impact of racism in the day to day lives of people of colour. Simply taking his dog for a walk evokes multiple feelings for Kieber-Diggs. What is most amazing is that there remains for them in the midst of it all a capacity for hope. Maybe it is connected to the belief that there is a revolution going on outside, and hopefully inside -
…one that may actually see a turning of the world.
Sister Margo Ritchie, csj