A month ago, as Amanda Gorman shared her beautiful prose during President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ inauguration, students at KIPP Rise Academy in Newark had recently finished their latest history unit on the enslavement of Africans in America. Students at Rise, a public charter school that serves students in fifth through eighth grades, were asked to think carefully about the unit and create a project that explained the connection between modern days and the era of slavery.
Makayla Brown, a KIPP Rise seventh grader, wrote this poem, entitled “The Root of Racism.” A future poet laureate, perhaps?
Check out 7th grader, Makayla Brown! She's a KIPP Rise seventh grader, who wrote this poem, entitled “The Root of Racism.” A future poet laureate, perhaps? @KIPP @njedreport pic.twitter.com/VmQe4rT7f8
— Education Post(@edu_post) February 24, 2021
The Root of Racism
My joy went away
Learning about that one day in 1619
The first slave ship arriving with 20-30 enslaved people
The first time my ancestors were declared
As property
Their lives
Worth 1,000 dollars.
Paper.
My memories
Of reading books and articles
Seeing my people lynched, burned, and
Working in a white man’s field
For 396 years with no pay
Seeing our hair pulled from our heads
Cut, shaved, burned and stuffed in chairs
My memories of learning
That my great great great grandmother
Could’ve been leather
My rights, non-existent
And culture stripped
“Speak proper English” but you didn’t teach me
And even after this we still struggled
We still had to fight for a right to be a alive,
Mothers and fathers kneeling to the white man
Yet 396 years later we still aren’t free
Seeing our people killed
On a mobile device and even in person
All because of skin
And now?
All lives matter?
Yet my Indigenous brothers and sisters,
Kidnapped, and bigoted
As if it’s something normal?
All lives matter
Until a person decides to speak in their native language
Because they can
All lives matter
But a 12 year old child was gunned down
Over a toy
All lives-
We remember
The deaths of our people
For skin
But my culture is now “trendy”
Blackface is “just a costume”
“I want to be a Native American for Halloween”
My culture isn’t your costume
A white woman goes viral for wearing traditional
Japanese kimono and
Wearing other things like African print
And loves hanging “dream catchers” on her wall
But to her I’m nothing but a Monkey
To her and to society
They are nothing but calculators
To her and anyone else
We’re not human
We’re ghetto, nasty and dirty
But our culture and clothing
Our beautiful skirts and dresses with wonderful vibrant colors
Our food oh so yummy
But we still do not exist
The roots of racism was bad enough
But people still do not understand our struggle
Proud Boys, KKK, and other hate groups still cease to exist
All we can remember is making sure not to go outside at night
In the south
We only remember our struggle
From the day my people arrived on that boat
Did much really change?
“Make America great again”
But where exactly was it great Mr. White Man
When?
The traumatic past all people of color have faced
Is no “American Dream”
There is no American Dream
Racism is still here
And it’s not much different from the past
Our minds
Our hearts
Our souls
Remember the roots to our oppression
We remember
We
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