Ethan George

Smith

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.¶

AMay 2nd 2020

No Justice, No Peace: A Spoken Word Poem

Keep your hands in sight

Don't make any sudden movements

And NEVER look them in the eyes because that just might make them lose it

You see when they look at you they don’t see a life,

They cant hear your unsteady breath

Or feel

the pounding of your heartbeat

They see your blackness and suddenly

`You’re just as expendable as the bullets in their sidearms

No bodycam can depict the disproportionality of black families;

Or should we just call for what it is...murder

Killing our brothers fathers mothers sisters and brothers

George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Brionna Taylor, Eric Gardener, Philando Castile

The list goes on, Black lives

Stolen from their loved ones who are barely surviving poverty.

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

Because why does it take 7 YEARS to become a lawyer but a few months to become an officer

What happens when those who represent the law….are lawless

You see police were originally designed to patrol slaves

Not to protect or save

To keep them from overcoming those by whom they were oppressed

Nothing more or less

And what is the difference today

It's a never ending cycle.

Working to resegregate and disassociate blackness from the American Culture.

The whitenessAnd the Whiteness controlling the media paintswill continue

To paint this chopped aand screwed effigy of interracial geniality;

But in actuality, there are more 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;

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 Arberyour Black Brothers and sisters is of the same tone as John F.

Kennedy.your white president

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 talentedan 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'sAs if letting jackie robinson ball was supposed to cover up the years of oppression and

suffering;

thrown onto the majority down belowfrom our people.

It's an eternity of inequality.

For a felony means unemployment.

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 topicsIf it wasn't recorded that white cop would still be walking free

But that's not enough

Justice should not have to be facilitated

SO until it ends and we are met with true equality

I will fight and scream with all the life in me

NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE
Ethan George

Writing 2

Smith

April 19 2020

Self-Reflective Essay

My inspiration behind this poem came from the abundance of issues the America has

been facing in these past few weeks.There is absolutely no way that I could sit and be indifferent

to the injustices brought among the black community. The recent murder of George Floyd was

the tip of the ice berg for African Americans in the sense that our call to be heard has not been

respected. The list of black bodies murdered unarmed or without clear reason is continuing to

grow as families continue to suffer and beg for change in this country. It is evident that our

current president uses black tragedy as a publicity stunt while setting in motion to support the

criminalization and murder of African American protestors. I am personally disgusted at the fact

that the country we live in doesn’t accept people who look like me solely because of our skin

color. There is no way that I could sit back and stay silent during a time where our voices need to

be heard the most. People need to be educated on black history and learn about the important

ideas that traditional history classes failedfail to cover. Although the poem was originally based

on a peer reviewed article in the black studies department on how white reporters address

controversial black injustices in the media, it has grown to be much more than that. The poem

has become a voice to the hundred of thousands of black people affected by the wrongs of police

brutality. Although my original intent was to uphold the boundaries of the translation
assignment, my passion drove me to do more and create a piece that could be felt by those who

are grieving the loss of their black brothers and sisters.

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.

The poem circulates around America’s history of police brutality and unjustified

MURDER of unarmed black men and women who, in most cases, hardly committed any crime. I

added the origins of the American police force to shed light on how the organization was never

truly to protect and promote equality. I learned in my black studies class that the first constables

were appointed to look over and punish slaves in their attempts to escape their masters or form

revolution. These constables had no problem exerting brute force on slaves or even hanging them

or burning them alive to use them as examples for the rest of the slave community. I see no

difference today. Black people are being KILLED for standing up for their own rights. I truly
believe that police officers are using black bodies as examples because it seems as if those who

stand up and fight against this crooked system are beat down or slaughtered. Martin Luther King

Jr. was assassinated under this same ideology. They killed him for his attempts to create equality

and peace among the people. I don’t justify the violent acts that are being done to innocent cities

and small businesses, however, the rioting and violence have worked historically. After MLK

was assassinated, there was a massive revolt. Rioting and destroying of property all across the

South was a reflection of the anger built up in the black community. On the sixth day of those

riots, the Civil rights act was passed. I see complete resemblance with what is going on today.

Although there are definitely people taking advantage of our movement, those who are truly

affected by the wrongs of police brutality and racism are completely justified in their hatred

towards the American system. I can also say that this form of protest has the potential to be very

effective being that America values its economy more than it values human lives. We saw this in

president Trump’s efforts to invalidate the threat of the coronavirus and reopen the country much

too quickly. Protestors are making a point to put a dent in the American economy, forcing the

government to take notice.

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 badIt is also a call to community. Those who were under

my voice in protest felt the same pain I was feeling. Though my audience was extremely diverse,

the art of spoken word poetry allowed people from every background to be able to feel my
message and hear my voice. It's a call for EVERYONE to hold themselves and this country

accountable.

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 akillings of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery and referenced the abundance of

other black lives stolen at the hands of racist police and citizens.These are very recent

exampleexamples of how the racist American culture still exists to this day. The original title of

the poem was the title of theheading of a New York Times article about the killing of Ahmaud

Arbery. 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 changed the title to the

trending hashtag #NoJusticeNoPeace in light of the even more recent murder of George Floyd.

The fact that I started this assignment prioritizing one controversial injustice against the black

community and must update it to add even more recent injustices is the very reason I felt like this

poem needed to take a new path.

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
offrom the article and included content that would move the people and promote the protest. 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 triedused words like “body cam” and made multiple references to police to

emphasize their role in this mayhem. I added the word “disenfranchisement” allude to the ideas

presented by, black activist, W.E.B. Du Bois. I used this specific language and word choice 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 areas well as aggressive descriptions of sensitive

topics make the theme easy to understand and allow the reader to havecreate their own personal

understandingdefinition of the situation to createand evaluate 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 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 structuregive my all and empty as much feeling and thought into the work to

convey the true problems that desperately needed to be addressed.

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. No one can tell you what hurts you and what doesn’t. No one can tell you how

to feel or interpret situations. 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 poem is a compilation

of view points I feel like I have observed and experienced and it was written the way it was

written to promote empathy and shared pain as well as evoke anger and discomfort with the

situation. However, it is my feelings and interpretation coming from my experiences which are

ultimately different from anyone who reads or hears the piece.

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. In the revised poem, I let

loose of the main ties to the article and went in on the true injustices and problems going on

today. I felt like these issues were far more presently relevant than those of the article. I couldn’t
focus on solely the ideas in the original journal without bringing up the conflicts affecting

EVERYONE today.

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 “BarredStolen 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 killed or locked up for years

following in their footsteps selling drugs because they can’t afford school andor 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.

In its entirety, this poem came from me and my personal feelings. I couldn’t focus on

anything these past couple of weeks while being constantly reminded of the hell that this country

is breaking into. I can’t focus on chemistry or math when my people are being murdered. When

my own mother fears for my life every time I go to a grocery store. I shouldn’t have to protest

for my rights as a black man in America and I shouldn’t have to risk not coming home to my

family in order to stand up for what I believe in.