On Friday, October 16th I attended the First Fall Potluck of the Anti-Racist Alliance featuring poet Jewel Allison, presenting her book Stealing Peace: Let’s Talk About Racism. The event took place at the Community Church of NY and was from 5:30-9 pm.
This event started out with a discussion about racism and slavery. Many people were saying that racism was created by white people and can only be done away with by white people. It was interesting to hear this point of view because I’ve never heard anyone blatantly say that white people are to blame and that they’re the only ones who can get rid of it. I think it’s wrong to point out a specific race and put all the blame on them and I think to get rid of racism, all races can work together because white people aren’t the only ones who are racist and not all white people are racist.
The poet, Jewel Allison, came in after to present her book. She started out by saying that her book was an attempt to understand who we are as human beings. One main theme that resonated to me in her poems and her discussion was the idea of labels. She said that labels are a very small fraction of who we are and these labels are what make us think we’re different and this is how we started making ourselves smaller and smaller. The worry now is how we’re going to continue making ourselves smaller by coming up with new labels. Allison believes we need to see ourselves as one race; we are all African. She calls white people, white-skin Africans, who just migrated to a part of the world where there wasn’t much sun so their skin color didn’t need to be dark to protect them from it, which was interesting to me because it makes sense, but I’ve never really thought about it that way. Her poems, “Let’s Talk About Racism”, “From Africa to Europe with Love”, and “Songs of Solomon”, all highlight how racism affects everyone. She also talks about how history tells the story of who we are and how we relate to one another. One line that stuck out to me was “racism is underneath the sheets with us when we go to sleep at night.” I definitely believe this is true and it’s interesting to me because I never really thought about racism and how it impacts me before this class and event.
As a future educator, I want to instill in children that racism does affect everyone and that they can work together to fight against it starting with just acknowledging it for what it is and stepping away from the labels that separate us. It’s important for them to see how racism specifically relates to them and we can show them this by studying history and their own backgrounds and experiences. Also, after this event, I realized just how much poetry could be a really powerful tool to express feeling. It would be great to show students just how powerful they can be with a tool like poetry.
If anyone is interested in hearing a couple of Jewel’s poems, just search her name on YouTube. They’re really great. She’s a talented poet.
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Wow, that's interesting that people were saying that white people are responsible for creating and doing away with racism... did anyone disagree with this point of view?
ReplyDeleteI used to LOVE Jewel. Most of her songs all deal with deep stuff like this... I think her poetry and music and lyrics can all be great tools to bring into the classroom to talk about racism, segregation, community building, all that stuff we love. I especially love the fact that she believes that racism always exists everywhere and all the time, even though she is an upper-class white female pop(debatable) artist.
ReplyDeleteHer perspective on racism is very interesting. It's always so interesting to see how different people describe and interpret racism, its causes, and its consequences. I like what she said about labels. I think in an effort to emphasize and represent our different cultural heritages through labels we sometimes inadvertently create a larger space between ourselves and other groups.
ReplyDeleteI too was moved and inspired by the poetry of ms Jewel Allison. Let us note that Jewel Allison the poet is not Jewel the singer. The poet Jewel speaks powerfully and lyrically about racism and the path to healing. There is no emphasis on blame, but our collective responsibility to embrace this plague, own it and solve it for our children's sake if not our own. Donnetta
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