It’s been 20+ years since I attended or organized poetry slams in the summer before going off to get my MFA, after which I never wrote slam poetry again. It’s also possible that I never wrote slam poetry to begin with. I was full of piss and vinegar, but I wrote very quiet poems, and I think partially I was just experimenting with reading them loudly. Nonetheless, when I started writing this poem prior to the Georgia election, and then kept writing it after white supremacists attacked the Capitol on January 6, it became clear that this was not a poem that wanted to be soft and shrinking.
So, this MLK Day, as our Beloved Community meets over Zoom instead of in the streets to march in pride and conviction, I’ve decided to lean into my discomfort to share a poem in a style I’m not terribly comfortable with, and in a format that I’m also uncomfortable with. But dammit, if MLK teaches white people anything, it’s that they can put their petty discomfort aside in the name of justice.
As the Trump years are coming to a close, the trauma lingers. Naming things has a way of helping me process, and for me, naming the violence of White Silence over the last four years is critical. Like so many people, I’ve wrestled with abandonment as various family members fell into different conspiracy rabbit holes clearly meant to brainwash people with white supremacist propaganda.
But I’ve also wrestled with the violence of inaction and white silence. I’ve had seemingly fellow progressive peers suggest that my attending marches and protests is either dangerous or ineffective, as though one wouldn’t just choose to put their body in the street because they are following their conscience. Not only is that patronizing, it misplaces the danger. The truly dangerous thing is not using privilege to create more peace and justice in a community.
In the end, I’ve found solace from the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who I feel certain would have called out white silence as an example of “negative peace.” It’s fitting that King began his Letter From Birmingham Jail talking about the disappointment in the white moderate. I might not have known firsthand precisely the frustration with this demographic until witnessing firsthand the incredible din of white silence during the Trump years:
“I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. ~ Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. / Letter From Birmingham Jail
The working title for King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was “Normalcy—Never Again.” Such a fitting sentiment that reminds us that we have an obligation to push against the status quo and the forces that dictate what “normal” is, which of course is nourished by White Silence.
This is why I must speak and write. This rant includes some cultural references that are better understood in context: the black squares refer to #BlackOutTuesday, which signaled a show of support on social media for George Floyd but was also a flimsy way for corporations to virtue signal without actually engaging in anti-racism. Likewise, the pink hats are a reference to the “pussy hats” from the 2017 Women’s March, which many Black and Indigenous women saw as a way that white women engage in white lady feminism that looks away from racial injustice.
Listen to the Sound of White Silence
Performative allyship is dead, but White
Silence has never said: I. Can’t. Breathe.
White Silence insists that all silence is golden,
Makes peace with oppression, looks away,
Sees violence over there—guns
In the air, fists punching soft flesh, breaking
Glass at the Capitol—not here,
Coddled in suburbia, tucked
Into bed with tender lips
Pressed to the forehead.
White Silence never hums, whispers, or sings
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Little black squares got lost in a big black
Hole, while White Silence Instagrammed
White Soul journeys, laughed
At garden parties, sucked
Down bougie cocktails, took
Self-care selfies. Oh look, White
Silence has bangs now.
White Silence fertilizes soil
Where fascist flowers grow,
Wears the pink hat of privilege, saves
Justice for another day, says: my Whiteness
Is so busy, my Whiteness is having a bad
Mental health day, a bad hair day, or, it’s Tuesday, White
Silence never speaks out on Tuesdays.
White Silence does not think too much
About why the First Amendment comes first
Because it fears words
More than it fears injustice, wags
Ableist fingers at those who speak,
Says, it’s useless, you’re foolish, while organizing
Litter pickups in affluent, White neighborhoods
On MLK Day. The betrayal of White Silence ensures
That only White history is passed through DNA,
Pressed into history books, certifying
The freedoms of White children. White
Silence begets, White innocence, begets
White violence, ricocheting in classrooms
And city halls, always speaking
First in committees. White Silence turns
Away from its own diagnosis
While professing to heal the world.
Élan Young 