Tag Archives: police shootings

Faulkner on Racism’s Deep Roots

Faulkner’s “Intruder in the Dust” shows how deep into the American psyche racism reaches, helping explain the spate of police killings or unarmed Blacks.

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Choose Honey over Race Hatred

Audre Lorde captures the utter waste when we descend into violence, a good message for the race hatred we are witnessing around the country.

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Black Lives Mattered to Langston Hughes

Following two more shootings of unarmed black men, the New York Times devoted a full page to Langston Hughes’s powerful poem “I, Too.” Meanwhile, his poem “Harlem” provides an explanation for the riots in Charlotte.

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Poetry Turns Prisoner’s Life Around

Reginald Dwayne Betts’s life was turned around when he encounter an anthology of African American poetry in prison. Today he is a graduate of Yale Law School and an accomplished poet in his own right. I share a poem written about Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old shot by Cleveland police.

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Toni Morrison: Stand Up & Breathe

“I can’t breathe” has become a rallying cry for Black protesters. Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon” shows powerfully what it feels like to breathe again.

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