Ethan George

Writing 2

Smith

April 19 2020

“Two Weapons, a Chase, a Killing and No Charges”

The disproportionality of black families;

Affected by the wrongs of police brutality;

Leaves fathers killed or left to rot behind the steel bars.

Barred from their loved ones who are barely surviving poverty.

There’s this lack of community and need for mass scrutiny on the American System.

A never ending cycle.

Working to resegregate and disassociate blackness from the American Culture.

The whiteness controlling the media paints this chopped a screwed effigy of interracial geniality;

But in actuality, there are hidden cases of police brutality;

And the formation of a misconstrued reality of white on black crime.

Black:

A race portrayed as criminal and inferior;

Whose interior is constantly neglected;

but if we check the neck tag;

We are all human.

Black or White.

The American dream won’t accept color in spite of black excellence.

 It uses excuse after excuse to excuse the fact that;

The blood of Ahmad Arbery is of the same tone as John F. Kennedy.

But somehow blackness is forced to endure this long journey

To disprove there is a physical disadvantage.

The mentality is chosen.

Racism depicts blackness as a weapon and those who brandish it are prosecuted;

And persecuted for trying to manage;

In a system whose tactics paint them as savage.

Either a deadbeat animal with a criminal mentality;

Or a talented entertainer meant to symbolize a rags to riches anomaly.

For when a black man puts on his show it's his only claim to relevance.

It's supposed to cover up the years of oppression and suffering;

thrown onto the majority down below.

It's an eternity of inequality.

For a felony means unemployment.

Probation means a life stuck under the foot of the government;

Leaving families broken and children in the streets;

To grow up as the indecent, crime seeking stereotypes they are painted to be.

You’re guilty too.

Because when I say “Black Man” paint a picture of what you see;

And deeply analyze his features and reflect on how your personal depiction came to be.
Ethan George

Writing 2

Smith

April 19 2020

Self-Reflective Essay

My inspiration behind this poem came from my black studies class. We went over an

abundance of topics that traditional history classes failed to cover. The peer reviewed article

addressed the different ways that news outlets depict racial conflicts. It explained how large

news companies often undermine the gravity of serious racial issues. The journal analyzed how

undermining subjects like police brutality and other white on black crime is a form of

disenfranchisement of the black community. It emphasizes how the media depicted the war on

drugs as necessary for a safer nation when, in reality, it disproportionately convicted African

Americans. Problems like this one are the reason I want to be more educated on black history. I

want to be able to identify passive oppression and express it in an educated way. Although I

didn’t translate the exact examples used in the journal, I took the theme and added my own

references to it. The goal was to expose a blunt reality of the racial inequality that the news

media tried to suppress. I used poetry as a medium to redirect the educational article into a piece

that evokes real feelings and encourages deep introspection within the reader.

I believe that spoken word poetry is one of the most powerful forms of writing in the

sense that each word is cleverly chosen to hold weight. In this case, the audience was white

America. This poem is a call for those who aren’t even aware of their personal microaggressions
or their role in the modern racism black people are victims of. It's a call for the reader to hold

themselves accountable rather than feel bad.

The primary document I drew information from used Trayvon Martin and Laquan

McDonald as examples of the recent injustices done against the black community and

downplayed by the media. Instead of using these same examples, I used the killing of Ahmad

Arbery. It is a very recent example of how the racist American culture still exists to this day. The

title of the poem was the title of the New York Times article about the killing. Not once in the

article did it emphasize the significance of Arbery being a middle aged black man stalked,

provoked, and killed by two white men nor that the reason given for calling the police on him

was that Ahmad was “a black man running through our neighborhood.” This is a perfect example

of how the media takes away the gravity of the bigger picture. How it undermines racial issues

and almost supports the antiblack culture.

I chose this conflict because it hits very close to me. I felt like I could take the formal

message that was presented to an audience of academic researchers and put it into something that

can have an affect on anyone who reads it. I left out a lot of the specific historical context and

included more general conflicts that I felt the general body of America could have knowledge of.

For example, I didn’t need to mention the civil rights activists fighting for racial equality even

though the article goes into deep historical context about the Black Panther movement. Instead I

referenced that “racism depicts blackness as a weapon”. This refers to the hundreds of black

activists killed or jailed for expressing their disbelief in the American government to provide

racial equality. I tried to paint as vivid of a picture as possible because spoken word poetry is

supposed to make individuals feel something. It's hard to empathize with things that you don’t
see or understand. Providing general trends and situations that are easy to understand and allow

the reader to have their own personal understanding of the situation to create their own feelings

as well.

The main challenge of the genre translation was finding a genre that could reproduce the

theme of the original work in its entirety. It is quite obvious that a comedy piece or a science

fiction story would be difficult genres to preach the ideas of social injustice on a serious note.

Poetry was the perfect outlet to me in the sense that it could be generalized to any audience who

reads with an open mind. It can be understood and pondered on.

One thing I figured out about the genre of academic writing in black history is that, as a

black man who can sympathize with the social injustices brought up in a lot of these writings, it's

hard to keep my personal feelings away from the academics of a subject. When reading the

original text, I could feel the sensitivity of the subject and I wasn’t sure that I could translate the

article without including my personal feelings and biases toward it. However, poetry is a place

where you find new ways to express your feelings and say what you need to say. I was able to

address the social issues brought up in the article and add some of my own thoughts and feelings

through the poetic structure.

I also learned that even though different genres have different principles or expectations,

the beauty of writing comes with creativity. You can write whatever you want and feel however

you want to feel. When I was writing this poem, I didn’t try to supress my thoughts. I portrayed

my thoughts and feelings in a way I felt was necessary. It's ​my ​writing therefore it's under my

influence and stems from my own personal experiences.

 The main thing I had to keep in mind was keeping the information in the poem relevant

to the information in the article. Because this is a topic I know a lot about, I found myself

veering in different directions and bringing up other themes that were not presented in the

original article. Because of this, I often had to go back and reflect on if I was translating

information or adding my own thoughts. This happened multiple times.

Because the original journal article was NOT a poem, I had to find ways to take the main

points of the article and rephrase it in a way that wasn’t as informative but sought to appeal to

emotion. For example, the original text references Ronald Reagans’s war on drugs and explained

how it led to the mass incarceration of many African Americans, leaving families devastated. In

my poem, I alluded to these issues of disproportionate incarceration multiple times. I also

brought up how these criminalizations affect the ability to find a decent job. This cycle leaves

people unemployed and back on the streets. I used phrases like “Barred from their loved ones”

and “kids grow up in the streets” to paint a picture of the injustice the article was addressing. The

phrase makes you imagine kids whose fathers were locked up for years following in their

footsteps selling drugs because they can’t afford school and can’t find a job. Instead of just

educating the reader on the situation, this makes them feel it directly. This form of rephrasing

and manipulation of words adds feelings to the work. The poem feels like it was written by

someone who cares deeply about the conflict whereas the article was written as more of a

historical overview and analysis.