Race Matters
For Emily Raboteau, flying is not easy in “The Tragicomic Mulatto” from Searching For Zion:”There was no place for me inside their rhetoric. I didn’t have the right vocabulary. I didn’t have the right pedigree.This is what my mixed race has made me: a perpetual unanswered question.This is what the Atlantic slave trade has made me: a mongrel and a threat.”
Vandal Recommends
Turning to Salt: “i never leave a prison / without my head splitting / down my spine an iron / hand on my lungs,” from Suheir Hammad’s “Letter to Anthony [CRITICAL RESISTANCE].”
Dining Cars and Turnips: “The trains was segregated in those days and times. There were certain sections, you know, for blacks and then for whites. The whites and the blacks are not sitting together on the train at all. Called a black section, you know. All black folks. You know, we had all our boxes and bags piled up, you know, all over the place, you know…” from Samantha J. Boardman’s “Collard Greens All Year Long: African American Migration Narratives and the Promise of Newark.”
Vandal Outloud
Words with Strangers: “As if performing “hood” through dress somehow allows others to suspect you of the worst and use force against you if necessary. Trayvon Martin is portrayed not as a legal minor who was minding his own business, but instead as an “enraged black man-child.” And we all know what that means and is.” Vandal on “Why the Zimmerman Verdict Matters.”
