Friday, December 12, 2014
Generations of Hatred
The poem Night, Death, Mississippi by Robert Hayden that Louis read for us a little while ago really stuck out to me at the time. It's easily one of the most horrific poems that we've read so far this year, and the implications of it really are heartbreaking. The poem is told from the perspective of an elderly KKK member who's too old to continue to do what he loves, so he helps out and supports his grandson, "Boy." Everywhere I look in the modern day, I can spot instances of antipathy between younger generations and older generations, mainly doe to progressive social change making the world a better place (at least from my perspective, I suppose). That's clearly not happening in this poem. The grandfather is proud of the son for doing things exactly the same way that he did. No change whatsoever is occurring here, just generations of perpetuated racism.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I definitely agree with it. This perspective of racism being perpetuated through out the generations is definitely a scary idea. This weekend I spent a while doing some research on the KKK and started watching a documentary about it, and it definitely seems like this generational aspect to racism does have some truth to it. The KKK started in the reconstruction with a pretty solid number of members, and then eventually fell apart to a certain extent. Then it came back the next generation during the 1920's having 4-5million members, and then had another resurgence during the civil rights era. There is one part of the documentary that really struck me though. At one point one of the men says that though it is true that the KKK is at a very low place in terms of membership, there are a number of other organizations that are growing with the same goals, they just don't wear the sheets because they look silly now. This entire idea of the generational aspect of racism really fit the idea of re-memory that we see in Beloved.
ReplyDeleteI agree that this poem presents a depressing view of the possibility for generational change, as it compels us into the perspective of the grandfather on the porch, proud of his grandson for "carrying on tradition." It's a common assumption that racist attitudes (and a host of other prejudices, along with more positive values) are passed down generationally. (And I often wince when I see images of lynchings--which used to be passed around and sold as souvenir postcards--and there are inevitably a handful of younger boys in the crowd, as you can see this dynamic represented in the poem in "real time.")
ReplyDeleteBut it's also true in very many cases that the younger generation will seek to distance themselves from the attitudes of their parents, and their parents' culture, and at risk of sounding Pollyanna, I think there is some reason for optimism here. Racism has become a powerful social taboo in contemporary pop culture--few young people are willing or eager to "come out" as programmatic racists--and the conversation about racial identity, white privilege, etc. has been more sophisticated in recent years (beyond the "color-blind" platitudes and paeans to the civil-rights movement and progress that I was raised on). Amid all the reason for despair surrounding the recent mass protests against institutional racism in law enforcement, it's heartening how strongly these issues are resonating with youth of various racial/ethnic backgrounds. I see a lot of white kids who emphatically don't want to live in a society where black lives don't matter, and they're increasingly willing to speak out publicly on the subject.