RP1

Out of everything I have read so far, Rushin’s poem, and the phrase “Stretch or die” (Rushin, xxii) in particular, have resonated most with me. Although I do not feel her frustration and anger, I completely understand her decision to become a bridge to nowhere but herself. Coming from a country where race is not as big of an issue and where blackness is viewed more often as an advantage than anything else, I have had to do some stretching and evolving of my own in order to understand this new world I have entered. I too have had to do some translating. My aim in translating, however, has not been to make people understand each other, but to make myself understand why people here act and react the way they do to certain things, and to see through the eyes of people who were born and raised here. “I’d like to kill reality/ which I don’t understand” (Chrystos, 46). I feel like much of Chrystos’ frustration is based on the fact that no one seems to feel, acknowledge or accept her anger. “They’re always telling me I’m too angry” (Chrtstos, 44). Evidently, they do not understand her or seek to understand her because it is more socially acceptable and, quite frankly, much easier to just be pleasant and not upset yourself. They don’t see life the way she sees it, which frustrates her even more because she cannot even articulate the reason why she is as angry as she is. There is no translator between her and them, and Rushin illustrates that that is equally as frustrating as having to be the translator. Evidently, much frustration results from lack of understanding, and that lack of understanding often comes from an unwillingness to stretch oneself to see life from the viewpoint of another.

   

In Thursday’s class, we concluded that race is a social construct and is therefore the brainchild of a person who got to choose what features race would be based on. Those person’s choices became the “given”. People have killed and tortured each other, discriminated against each other, rioted, written about, dedicated their entire lives to and even gone to war over some idea that a person just like them came up with and decided was the truth. The entire world and its institutions, societies and political systems are influenced by a man-made concept! This week’s theme, however, has highlighted how blurred the lines are. Because Susie Phipps, who identified as white, looked white, and grew up in a white community had one black predecessor, she was black (Omi & Winant, 53). This got me thinking about the difference between race and ethnicity. In class, we discussed how many people have to check the “other” box when they are asked what race they are. I am black, but in the United States, there is no box for me to check because forms say African American, which I know is referring to black people, but I cannot tick that box because I am not American by any stretch of the imagination. The same thing happens to white Africans because the form will give the options of either black or European and they are neither. There is no category in the “given” for these types of people, hence the given is flawed, and yet people did and still do run with it. As long as one is safe in their own little bubble, there is no need to stretch, but it looks to me like failure to stretch and look at both sides of a coin does not just cause one's own death but the death of other people. Both poets highlight that it is only when one is willing to make themselves uncomfortable that they will be "useful" (Rushin, xxii).