Dear White America
by Danez Smith
is a poem about the disparity between black people and white people in America and and his condemnation it. when loss and abuse is common from oppression, it can lead to individuals who tries to accept the suffering that will lead themselves to want to escape from oppression. This is a huge problem in America that pervades to the root of their culture and history.
One of the main issues the author brings up in the poem is the multiple deaths he has gone through in his life and how he wishes that god could bring them back. As quoted in the line
“I want Chucky, Bo, Meech, Trayvon, Sean & Jonylah risen three days after their entombing, their ghost re-gifted flesh & blood, their flesh & blood re-gifted their children”.
He has also given reasons for these deaths in what he calls white bread voodoo referring to how the police are the ones killing his brothers and sisters. The internalized racism in the police system and the countless deaths caused out of these preconceived notions are glanced over by people because they’re planning their brunch.
Another big part of his poem is how he’s left earth for another planet. This is how he expresses that he doesn’t want to be apart of the America that kills his brothers and sisters, though he is forced to be apart of it against his will; they were forced to even though they did not build the boats that brought them there, they did not build the prisons they are trapped in and they did not ask to join America. He sees people not a skin colour but is asked why its always about race. He wants a place where his brothers and sisters can live freely without pain or suffering.This all stems from the internalized racism that America has. He brings about the fact that its not them doing it to themselves but its white people who are killing his brothers be that through the system of police or destroying their history his people have had through out America. The white America is against the black parts of America even though they say they aren’t.
We shoot children too, don’t we
by Dan Almagor
is a poem about the Israeli and Palestinian conflict that has been going on since the 1950’s and brutality of the war itself. he sees the similarities between what Israel is currently doing to Palestine as to what has happened to the Ukrainian Jews by the Tsar soldiers, the Israeli militarism will not end in Israel staying the home of the Jewish.
Almagor makes a point of saying that none of these people, the Palestinians and the Israelis wanted to have a full scale war where both sides have casualties each day. They just want to live their lives in peace and be normal people who are proud of their country. But the people of both sides still push that the other must go for them to live in safety. The Israeli military who has a past of atrocities against the Muslim people of Palestine and blame the Islamic extremists of Palestine for why they have to fight and the people of Palestine who fight against the expanse of the Israeli state using “terrorist” tactics. Both sides perpetuating the conflict in a never ending cycle till one state is declared true and has full control over all the land, the Israeli state or the Palestinian state.
What Almagor has seen in the past and present of Israel through his time of being a lyricist for the Israeli government writing “Israeli macho culture and military heroism” now as a professor of Hebrew literature, he sees the history of racism that has pervaded their culture for a long time.
“Mean, arrogant, and dumb.
Who do we think we are?
Who gave us the right
To be so deaf, so dumb?
Ignoring the obvious: They are as human
As we are, as we are.
At least as human as we used to be
Only forty-one years ago.
No less diligent, no less smart.
As sensitive, as full of hope.
They love their wives and children
As we do, no less.
And our children now shoot theirs
With lead, plastic bullets, and gas.”
Israel makes it out as though they are not people just the terrorists who want to get rid of the Jewish birth place, even though most of these people are not what Israel makes them out to be. Most of the Palestinian people do not want the conflict they were forced into by the minority population of extremists who also affect the Palestinian people themselves.
