In the Black Future...
my most important poem
In a Latinegra English teacher's version of the future
Black people's verbs and nouns can agree perfectly
and no one will say they "talk white."
Grammar proficiency can be the norm.
Code-switching is more natural than changing clothes.
Bilingual or trilingual Black people need not be a scarcity
Doesn't need to make us incapable
of speaking Standard English
to those raised far from our neighborhood streets
In the Black Future,
There's "a place so dangerously absurd"1
That words reemerge as our tools and our friends
Rather than the means by which the man condemns us to ignorance.
I'm not saying my rapper friend Jabee and my student Typrice
Should prefer the pages of Baldwin and Adichie
To YouTube, Soundcloud and IG,
But if we ever want to return to our former glory
Where we also were seen as worthy
of the dominant culture's highest accolades and goals
We must readily decode sentences that don't fit in 140 characters
Without needing to ask Siri what the words mean.
We've got to stop dumbing ourselves down and calling it resistance,
Gotta stop equating selling out with intelligence.
60 years ago,
The average Black college grad
Knew the hot new beats and tones of Gillespie, Davis and Holliday,
As well as the free verse of Hughes.
They could analyze themes in Othello, Tennyson, and Whitman
Before dancing the latest Jerk or Watusi.
They rolled out of bed Saturday morning,
hung over from last night's homemade whiskey
And went to sweat it out in a game of street ball on the yard.
Now we think expertise needs to be one-dimensional.
In the Black future we remember to believe in Renaissance
and being good at everything.
In the Black future
We cease cleaning our plates
Like slaves who worry about our next meal.
Better yet, we no longer fill them up
With poverty mentality, carbs, grease and swine.
We know there is greater pleasure than a "food coma."
Blood flows through our arteries as freely as wind through an expensive weave.
We still have the muscles that make us jump higher,
The speed that lines the pockets of the leagues' pale-skinned CEOs,
But we aren't afraid to eat vegetables or sweat out our perms
And that makes us old as well as healthy.
In the Black future
There are no more excuses
Disguised as crutches or exemptions.
We look at the world that hates us,
The parents who made us,
And we get up on time for class anyway.
We flip off the oppression that plagues us,
Chant prayers for those falling down in the way of us,
And we hug each other anyway.
We nod at our southern neighbors,
Wave to our eastern culture pavers,
Blow kisses to our Pacific populace,
And thank the originators of this space
for not treating us like the enslavers.
And we raise our fists together anyway.
In the Black future
We see today through tomorrow-colored lenses
Because "progress rarely puts out for those who feed it.”2
We give more than requested,
Work harder than required,
And believe in the unrealistic
Because we matter
And our babies, more than our own bodies, depend on this
Now, are you ready to see me argue with the poem?
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
Stephen Lawson