Title: 7 Powerful Poems About Injustice & Racial Discrimination | Hive Life
Headings: 7 Powerful Poems About Injustice & Racial Discrimination
7 Powerful Poems About Injustice & Racial Discrimination
You’re Not Black – Amy Saunders
I, Too (1926) – Langston Hughes
Immigrant Blues – Li-Young Lee
Home – Warsan Shire
Caged Bird (1983) – Maya Angelou
After Zuko (2019) – Dave Harris
Rosa (1998) – Rita Dove
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Content: 7 Powerful Poems About Injustice & Racial Discrimination | Hive Life
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7 Powerful Poems About Injustice & Racial Discrimination
by Cheyelene Singh APAC Jul 7th 2020 10 mins
https://hivelife.com/powerful-poems-injustice-racial-discrimination/
From Langston Hughes to Warsan Shire, here are 7 moving poems about the trials of racial discrimination and injustice, written by poets of colour. As mainstream media begins to slacken its coverage of the Black Lives Matter protests that are taking place across the world, the movement continues to rage as people of colour demand that their stories be heard. With many veterans of activism telling tales of civil rights protests that date back to our grandparents’ generation, it’s clear that there’s a serious need for systemic change in the world’s approach to racism – and it needed to happen yesterday. We’ve curated a list of incredibly powerful poems that depict both the internal and external struggles of being a person of colour, from 1926 to today, with hopes that they will inspire, uplift, and stir people to action. You’re Not Black – Amy Saunders
I sit with them at lunch
Fried chicken on my plate
I eat with a knife and fork
“You’re not black, if you don’t use your hands to eat”
Yet I know that hands tied up the strange fruit on the trees in the south
The fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop*
I don’t recognise the Caribbean music, or the Afrobeats
I only know of Liszt, Chopin and Ludovico Einaudi
Whose names you’ve probably never heard
“You’re not black, if you don’t know this beat”
Yet, I am familiar with the beat of pounding
Pounding of sugar cane, the whipping of backs
The cries and screams of my ancestors
Ring loud in my head centuries later
So how dare you? How dare you put me down! Question my ethnicity, I’m still a shade of brown
And I’m sorry if I don’t live up to your ‘black norms’
But I live in a world with segregated dorms
Society crushes me, tells me I’m ugly
But copies my features, they must think it’s funny
I’m not trying to in any way be mean
But I live in a society covered in white sheen
Sorry to Bother You, but I should Get Out
’Cause The Hate U Give leaves me with no doubt
That I am not The Help, the help that you need
But the Hidden Figures are clear to see
That I should stop trying to be ‘Black’ and just try to be
Me
*from ‘Strange Fruit’ by Abel Meeropol
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2019, Amy Saunders was only 13 years old when she wrote You’re Not Black, a poem that conveys the internal struggle of being a black person that feels like they’re on the outside of their culture looking in. Challenging the normalised ideas of what it means to be black, Amy uses excerpts from a song by Billie Holiday called ‘Strange Fruit’, originally written by Abel Meeropol in 1939 to protest against lynchings in America. She also makes clever references to popular, thought-provoking movies about racism, like Get Out, The Help, and Hidden Figures, which all emotively touch on the injustice that people of colour have faced generation after generation. I, Too (1926) – Langston Hughes
I, too, sing America.