Blog Update #2- Poetry

           Hello again! thank you for reading. once again I am going to update on my progress is this Creative Writing class. our homework for this week was to blog about anything that we have done in class thus far. well I chose to post about some more of the poetry we have read. In class on Tuesday, we looked at some poems in our poetry packet. There were some by poets from America, some by poets from foreign countries, very few by anyone I have ever heard of. There was one from Emily Dickinson, whom I personally enjoy. the poem that I chose, however, did not stand out because I knew it, it stood out because it appeared to have undertones of racism.
           The one poem that stood out to me was entitled "Parade". When reading it at first, It didn't exactly stand out. "Seven ladies and seventeen gentlemen at the Elks' Club Lounge planning and planning a parade." The initial response I hade was that it would be uninteresting and boring, something about a parade or party that wouldn't really appeal to me. The rest of the first stanza did nothing to reinforce this feeling, as it talked about a band in the parade and a Grand Marshall in his fancy suit. The second stanza is what caught my attention. The very first line of the second stanza read "Motorcycle cops, white, will speed it out of sight" and I thought, wait......are the motorcycles white, or are the cops white? and if the cops are white, why is that important...? then I read on. "If they can, solid black cant be right."
           This is where I started to think that this poem was about racism. It seemed ironic that the poem was called "Parade", a fun and enjoyable celebration, but there were subtle undertones of racism that followed. The cops were white, and they were trying to keep the African Americans out of the crowd. Next it read "I never knew that many negroes were on earth, did you?". One person was talking to another, and the other replied "I never knew!". That confirmed my suspicions. The poem ends with many shouts of "PARADE!" and one person saying "a chance to let the whole world see, the old black me." The ending got me thing about racism and how the world was just a few decades ago. Racism was a huge thing, what with segregation and women's rights. The fact that there were seventeen men and only seven women planning the parade shows hints of sexism. but among all else, the prominence of racism was staggering. Obviously the man in the poem was furious that everyone around him was having fun and celebrating, all the while there were people wondering why there were so many "negroes" around.
           That being said, I think that a poem like this, unfortunately, is not so far off in todays world. This world has come so far in terms of ridding the world of racism and segregation, but there are still cases of it everywhere. who knows, maybe there will never be a perfect world where racism does not exist, and where women are considered equal to men, but this poem showed me a lot about how black people were viewed in older times, and why they must still feel like they are being suppressed. it is easy for white people to celebrate and have fun, ignorant to the oppressions around them, however, for African Americans, they feel it every day-wondering if the next person they walk beside will being hoping not to be seen with them due to their skin color, something they were born with, something they have no say in, and no control over. Hopefully in the future, this problem will not be so prominent, and perhaps we can rid the world of racism altogether. Until then, I will try not to be blind to the comments a racist innuendos around me and maybe that will be enough to make a difference.