Title: The Best Poems about Prejudice and Discrimination – Interesting Literature
Headings: The Best Poems about Prejudice and Discrimination
The Best Poems about Prejudice and Discrimination
By Dr Oliver Tearle
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Content: Audre Lorde, ‘ Power ’. This is a harrowing but powerful poem about power: both the power of the state (specifically, the case of a police officer shooting dead a black child in the United States) and the power of words. Lorde, one of the finest African-American poets of the twentieth century, takes in the difference between poetry and rhetoric as she responds to the upsetting realities of life in contemporary America, including racial prejudice. Chrystos, ‘ Into the Racism Workshop ’. Chrystos is a Menominee writer and activist whose work often focuses on indigenous Americans’ civil rights, as well as feminism. This poem from the 1990s details the speaker’s involvement in a ‘racism workshop’, designed to highlight systemic prejudice against people of colour (in the United States specifically, here), and how a world-weariness attends such attempts to educate white Americans about the experiences of black people – although the end of the poem suggests that Chrystos, or at least the speaker of her poem, is still committed to the task of changing people’s minds and challenging their attitudes. Nikki Giovanni, ‘ Rosa Parks ’. Giovanni (b. 1943) is a well-known African-American poet and activist, who has written about one of the most significant Civil Rights activists, Rosa Parks, on several occasions (including writing a book for younger readers, Rosa, all about her). Parks, of course, came to widespread attention in December 1955 thanks to her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama, when she resisted racial segregation on a local bus and refused to give up her seat for a white passenger.