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: 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. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong. Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes. Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then. Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.