Showing posts with label race. Show all posts
Showing posts with label race. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Engulfed

A shadow hands you a book
and walks away. You open
the book to a middle page,
where you read, "The good idea
of 'America' died from complications
related to the disease of White
Supremacy. You're living in the
funeral." You close the book,
turn, and see a million shadows
and more rushing toward you.


hans ostrom 2016

Friday, September 11, 2015

Admiration Isn't Enough


(Charleston Church Massacre, 2015)


The screen shows an interview with two Black women
who survived. One lost a son
in the massacre: "I watched him take his last
breath." The other had been ready to die; the killer
"let" her live so she could "tell the story."

The story isn't his. The story's about
an ethnic group that's suffered beyond
comprehension--and had to comprehend. That
the suffering doesn't stop is White Americans'
fault and a nation's mortal wound. Nothing
will be right until White people own up

all the way. All the way, without
deflecting, without explaining away.
I'm tired of admiring
Black people for their courage and dignity
because admiration's passive and useless.

There's such a thing as too much suffering,
by a person, by a people. There's such
a thing as moral failure--of a person,
of White Americans.


hans ostrom 2015




Friday, December 19, 2014

"Have You?"

"Have you," she asked, "done enough
to counteract severe effects of USA's
vicious racism?" Springing from reflex,

responses came to mind, including
more than enough, more than others,
stock words and phrases like they,
them, how long . . .; and a litany
of all the troubles he, personally,
had seen. And other ba-bah-blahs.

A striking thought then came to his mind.
Why not look at the evidence?
He did so.

Finally, he answered:
"Apparently not," he said.
"Welcome back to the struggle,"
she said. "Consistency is key. Go
light on excuses and rationalizations.
Listen as a good ally will. Inform
yourself. Get in shape."



hans ostrom 2014



Tuesday, December 9, 2014

"The Long Haul," Hans Ostrom

Black truck hauling a white load.
Black train freighting a line of white boxcars.
Black barge moving heaps of beige garbage.
Black man holding up the weight of a white man killing him.

Getting on with it.
Carrying the carrying.
The white loads stay heavy, press down.
Inert weight, the freight is thought-free,
obtuse as iron and bereft of irony.

Where the black highway runs into blue water,
the black truck will dump its load at last
and roll lightly up the coast.

When the black train reaches the dusty depot,
it will wail like a monstrous saxophone,
then cut loose all those white cars, goodbye.

And after the black barge negotiates treachery
and sidles up to a wharf,
it will wait for a crane to take away
the accumulation
and then it will rise in the water.

Black notes behind bars
carry beat and tune
across white pages.

And the black notes, lifting from white charts,
shall swarm in air and, hitting white stones
hard and sweetly with the sound,
will turn them into beach sand.

White surrenders, exhausted from being White.
The White Queen and King had grown weary
of a polluted game. A humility blossoms
like an apple orchard. Milk is poured out
on black loamy soil. Comes the sound of weeping.



hans ostrom 2014




Tuesday, December 3, 2013

I'm Going To Need You To

I am going to need you to
give me your license and registration.
I am going to need you to
show me your hands.
I am going to need you to
get out of the car.
I am going to need you to
get down, get down!
I am going to need you to
shut up, stop talking.
I am going to need you to
what the fuck are you doing?
I am going to need you to
stop acting Not White.
I am going to need you to
give me a reason.
I am going to need you to
be ignorant of history.
I am going to need you to
die from the bullets I shoot.
I am going to need you to
die.
I am going to need you to
not be photographed.
I am going to need you to
understand I need my union rep.
I am going to need you to
accept the verdict.
I am going to need you to
not go crazy, riot, fight.
I am going to need you to
accept what's right.
I am going to need to
accept what is RIGHT.
I am going to need you.



hans ostrom 2013



Thursday, October 24, 2013

How White Operates, Too Often

Way too often, White
goes out like a boomerang
toward what is right
and fair and just, only
to turn in reactionary air

and curve home, home,
to righteous hate, selective
outrage, a change of "heart,"
smug safety, reunion with
old friends, and other amenities
of the supremacists' field
from which
the boomerang
was launched.

Whether you're Black
or White or something else,
here's the thing: if
you truly "get it,"

then you will know
what "it" is, and
you'll nod at
the tautology
(for sure),

and so,
you know,

no doubt
gratuitously,
I advise:

Beware of the White
radical, the White liberal,
the White conservative, and
it goes without saying
the White unapologetic bigot
spewing hate like a spigot.

Beware of them all. Be
unsurprised if they turn
back, if they curve a return to
"home," if, in fact,
they simply are not able.

For they are simple and White,
terrifyingly simple,
and they live
in a White-rewarding world,
and in most cases,
over the long haul,
they are not able.
They just aren't able.


hans ostrom 2013

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Failed Insults

Oh, you Kurdish book!

Don't give me that look, you fascinating nude portrait!

How can you live with yourself, hideous mildly tart apple pie?

Gesture of kindness, get out of town, hit the bricks.

Unpretentious professor, feeder of the hungry, calm presence, loyal friend:
you make me sick.

Working-class White male who isn't racist, I hope you're happy.


hans ostrom 2013

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Race/Ism

Race is mmmm.
Racism is.
Racist.
Racyst.
Resist.
Re: racism:

White, White, White
Why it, Why it, Why it
Wyatt burp

Wee, Wee, Wee
Wit, Wit, Wit
Nit, Nit, Nit
Not, Not, Not
Knot, Knot, Knot
Know, Know, Know

No, no, no, no, no
no racism no
more.


hans ostrom 2013

Sunday, May 19, 2013

"Choking It Back"

Today I happened to be
watching a cat choke back
the urge to vomit
a hair-ball just
as I was thinking of
the sheer number of Americans
who, first, consider themselves
White and, second, simply
cannot abide even the thought
of a Black man as President.
I want to say to them,
Vomit up that hatred, first,
and, second, read a
goddamned history book.




hans ostrom 2013

Monday, April 8, 2013

The WSJ Is Unamused by Bowdoin College

The Wall Street Journal (April 6, 2013) has offered yet another critique of “liberal” colleges and their interest in diversity, among other things. Believe it or not, the complicated tale hinges on a golf-outing that the president of Bowdoin College experienced with “philanthropist and investor Thomas Klingenstein.”

During the outing, Klingenstein apparently told Mills, “I would never support Bowdoin—you are a ridiculous liberal school that brings all the wrong students to campus for all the wrong reasons” [and you have] “misplaced and misguided diversity efforts.” This is Mills’ version. Klingenstein later weighed in: “I explained my disapproval of ‘diversity’ as it generally has been implemented on college campuses: too much celebration of racial and ethnic difference,” coupled with “not enough celebration of our common American identity.” What that common American identity might be, he apparently did not say.

Klingenstein had also funded a study of Bowdoin by the National Association of Scholars. He apparently got what he paid for as the study discovered, at least according to the WSJ, that “[t]he school’s ideological pillars would likely be familiar to anyone who has paid attention to American higher education lately. There’s the obsession with race, class, gender and sexuality as the essential forces of history and markers of political identity. There’s the dedication to ‘sustainability,’ or saving the planet from its imminent destruction by the forces of capitalism. And there are the paeans to ‘global citizenship, or loving all countries except one’s own.”

What a lovely rhetorical moment has unfurled here. First, note the scene and the actors: A white male president of an exclusive college has his back-swing interrupted by a wealthy man who doesn’t like newfangled ideas. Hilarious. Nobody knows the trouble these two have seen. What next–a double-bogey on the 18th? One hopes the round of golf occurred at an exclusive country club because Klingenstein apparently complained that the school brings in “all the wrong students for all the wrong reasons.” Note that neither the WSJ nor the aggrieved wealthy golfer explain what makes “the wrong students” the wrong students. By the way, the online source Peterson’s [guide to colleges] says the student body at Bowdoin is 65% White or “Caucasian.”

Then, the WSJ plays the equivocation-game. The small liberal arts college has “ideological pillars.” It has courses that concern race, class, gender and sexuality; therefore, it is “obsessed” with these. Not that evidence matters, but if you look at the areas of study Bowdoin offers, you will find such subjects as math, physics, neuroscience, chemistry, biochemistry, music, philosophy, Classics, economics, art history, and a variety of “foreign” languages. Wow, what a radical bunch these Bowdoin folks must be!

The WSJ also claims that “[i]n the History Department, no course is devoted to American political, military, diplomatic or intellectual history—the only ones available are organized around some aspect of race, class, gender or sexuality.” But in the Spring term alone, you will find courses on “Colonial America and the Atlantic World, 1607–1763,” which surely includes military, diplomatic, and intellectual concerns, and a course on “Place in American History,” which “Investigates place as a set of physical and biological characteristics, as a product of the interaction between humans and the environment, and as a social and cultural construct. Also attends to the challenge of writing history with place as a central character” (Bowdoin online catalogue).

But the WSJ doesn’t like even a whiff of environmental issues: “There’s the dedication to ‘sustainability,’ or saving the planet from its imminent destruction by the forces of capitalism. And there are the paeans to ‘global citizenship,’ or loving all countries except one’s own.” Again with the equivocation. If you perceive the world to be highly connected—here we are, by the way, on the Internet—you don’t love your country. If you reasonably deduce that “we” are running out of water, facing the consequences of global warming, and encountering all sorts of problems with pollution, then of course you must be anti-capitalism—as opposed to being, you know, realistic and practical. And how dare Bowdoin offer opportunities for students to think about how to reverse the harm done to the planet.

The WSJ and the poor (read: wealthy), victimized Klingnstein have fielded an entire team of straw men in their arguments. Therefore, one must agree with them. Bowdoin should offer an old-fashioned course on rhetoric and invite them to take the course—online, in person, or on the golf course.

Monday, October 8, 2012

It Is Election Season

It is Election Season in the U.S.A.
The Right knows exactly what it hates
but not what it supports. What passes
for the Left knows exactly what
it supports but not what it opposes.
The sheer weight of cash
breaks the back of democracy's
bridge: boom--into the river.

In the meantime, no fundamentals
will change.  You could say it was
lost in the Constitution. Or later,
when railroads took over.  Or
even later, when no one listened
to Eisenhower's farewell address.
You select your starting point,
your ending, your epistemic closure.

It is lost. Those who would challenge
the fundamentals were exposed
as noble but impotent: Occupy.
Those who should be occupied
pretend to be our close personal
friends: the media. Those

who work too much for not
enough will always
and forever get The Shaft.
It is Election Season in
the U.S.A. White men
are hanging chairs from
suburban trees, a most
safe evocation of lynching,
indeed, sir. Indeed sir.


Hans Ostrom, 2012

Friday, April 1, 2011

My White Body

(
(
(
(


My White Body

My white body has brought me ease
in this USA society that's marked black
and brown bodies, that marks them still.

My body white and masculine has functioned
as a passport, yes it has. Has often let me
be as invisible or as noticed as I prefer.

Has allowed me to prefer. I hear the voices
of contrarians: Have my white body and I
been excluded, ignored, worked hard, and


maybe even hated?  Oh, sure. But not so
as to make my white body's experience
and me equivalent to that of those marked

by this USA society. I've been reading
The Slave Ship: A Human History by
Marcus Rediker, 2008. You know, you

think you know, but you don't know--
that is why history is written, read.
Admit it. Admit you have a white body

according to the culture's rules, I told
myself. And let's not whitewash the issue.
This isn't Tom Sawyer's fence.

What's an admission worth? Not much.
It's a move, a mental shift. What must ensue
after the admission must be more productive

than just the admission. Otherwise the move
becomes just more hoo-hah from a mind inside
a white body. My white body has brought me ease.


Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom

Monday, March 7, 2011

When the White Man Told

&
&
&
&

When The White Man Told


When the white man told
the Black woman, twice, that
she was naive about race in the U.S.,
his attitude was authoritative,
terse, and humorless. Thus,

we may deduce that he
did not know how risible
his statement was. Sure, it was
possibly frustrating, possibly
infuriating, but also just
goddamned ridiculously,
unwittingly ironic.

And when a report, gussied up
as a poem, observed that a white
man watching a tennis match
between a Black woman and a
white woman made a white man
connect with his white tribe,
a synonym for clan, the report

was many things, but what it
wasn't was complicated,
sophisticated, news, or
helpful.  But of course
the white man and the report
had on their side the privilege
of all that confident leverage
that comes from centuries
of heavy, dull, but powerful
weight--I mean, a weight
that hangs around the neck
of the U.S. like an anvil.
A white man myself,

I can easily imagine this white
man, having corrected
the Black woman twice
(or so he imagined),
smiling; and then reading
congratulatory emails
from other white
men and women.



Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom

Friday, February 11, 2011

Tired of Talking About Race? Really?

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]
]
]


Tired


Some white folks sometimes say,
"I'm tired of talking about race."
I'd get tired of hearing them say
that and other things about race--
except then I say to myself, Tired?
Really? Try 300 years of slavery,
then getting emancipated into
the terrors of Jim Crow and the
Klan, then 60 more years, and
counting, of endless bullshit.

I've not yet met a Black man
in the U.S. who hasn't been
stopped by the police only
because he's Black. Some
white folks need to warp
who their president is so
desperately, they'll believe

anything--or say anything
to to those who will believe
anything. This isn't about
politics.  It's about something
much deeper and even more
awful than politics. Speaking
of which, I know

this smart man in the South who
knows his politics, I mean
real politics, knows it cold. He's
white. Twice he's told me,
"If it weren't for race, there'd
be no Republican Party  in the South."

So,when I think I might be
tired of what some white
folks say when they use
"tired" as an excuse not
to engage, I think, Really?
Tired? You're tired? Well,
what do you know?

Friends Black and White

[
[
[
[

Friends Black and White


History made us Black.
History made us White.
Anyway, my wife and I
(history made us White)
invited three friends over
(history made them Black),
women. We five laughed

all night, it seemed. Sure,
we talked about some serious
stuff. One of the friends said,
"I'm about to tell you some
sad shit."  But mostly we laughed.
Teased each other.

One of the women asked me
what I was up to, as I'm always
up to something. "Among other
things, I'm writing blues lyrics--
but," I added, "white guy--blues
lyrics?--I don't know . . . ." She
said, "It's okay. You're on the list."
And we laughed.

History made two of us White.
History made three of us Black.
We made us friends. I mean,
real friends. It takes some work:
friendship--hell, you know that.

You have to want it. You have
to know your histories. You
have to like to laugh and know
when not to laugh, as when somebody's
telling you some sad shit. You
have to want to learn, especially
if History made you White.


Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom