In this poem Metta Sama presents a series of impactful statements on race in everyday life that, in the aggregate, convey the aggression of supremacist/bullying performative utterances.
WhyWeCan’tHaveNiceThings#
I am terribly aggrieved about Atticus Finch being outed as a racist. I’d rather remember the
good he did. Team Atticus!
Saying that The Khaleesi is an imperialist and a racist is anti-feminist & anti-historical.
Team Khaleesi!
I don’t know how to talk about rape. . . I’m gonna go watch The Cosby Show to clear
my head
I don’t know how to talk about rape. . . R. Kelly’s Black Panties is my jawn!
I’m not transphobic! I thought Hillary Swank played a hot guy!
I’m not transphobic! I loved Hedwig and the Angry Inch!
I’m not racist! I thought those Asian guys were the best thing about that White Castle movie!
How can I be anti-woman?! I’m married to one for god’s sake!
Am I a racist just because I don’t care that my favorite press only publishes white writers?
Do we have to talk about transgender people? Can’t we just watch TransParent?
Ok so Woody Allen is a rapist just because his “daughter” said he was? Getouttahere
I’m not a rapist but yeah, I think, you know, sex is like better when women are you know,
loose, and well, alcohol helps
Isn’t it normal to only want to hang out with people who look like you?
No I don’t think it’s weird that all but one summer film stars all white casts. That doesn’t make
me a racist. But it makes you one for pointing it out
I don’t want to talk about race. . . it just bums me out
Why gay people always gotta be up in somebody’s face with that gay shit!
Saying a woman is a cunt isn’t the same as hating women. I mean let’s face it. Some women are
cunts! #I’mJustSaying
But. . . don’t you think that saying “I looked into a sea of whiteness” when in fact you were
looking at a room of white people can be construed as racist? I mean, it’s a double
standard, like reverse discrimination. #I’mJustSayin
How can it be rape if she like changed her mind after she took her panties off? I mean, she did
get him riled up. She’s like a cock tease or. . . something. #I’mJustSayin
Wait. . . Wait. . . What’s transphobic about wanting to know if it’s still there? I mean we have a
right to know. . . #I’mJustSayin’
Instead of POC complaining about presses that don’t publish them they should start their own
presses… But that would be racist too…I just don’t know. I don’t have any answers. . .
What’s race go to do with it?
This isn’t about race!
The Race Card is staging a comeback, I see!
It’s racist to say that someone is Whitesplaining
It’s racist to say Whitefolks
I still don’t understand why it’s racist for white people to say nigger
That’s so gay!
It’s too much work to remember all these gender pronouns
I can tell he used to be a she
If she don’t want all that attention she shouldn’t dress like that
She was asking for it
Black people need to get over slavery
Why do Indians get to have reservations? That’s not fair. #I’mJustSayin
Why is everybody so damn sensitive?
So he called her a whore . . . Maybe she is a whore. . . #I’mJustSayin
Ugh! All this race talk. I need to move to another planet
Rape is bigger than the individual so we’re really doing harm talking about individual rapists
#IJS race is an institutional problem so we need to attack that and not people
She needs to just get over it
#IJS the fact that she can’t get over it makes me think she knows she’s guilty.
What good is it to keep talking about it?
#IJS just because he didn’t hit it right doesn’t mean he raped her
It’s like beating a dead horse
(Did someone say beat a dead horse? That’s animal cruelty!)
Be kind to nature and you’ll inevitably be kind to humans
They killed Cecil! This is a sign of the apocalypse!
#JeSuisCecil
We’re all the same
#LionsLivesMatter
We’re all equal
I’m colorblind
I don’t see color! Hey, can you pass me that green marker?
#IJS I don’t see what’s wrong with a team being called Redskins
Stop talking about it & maybe it’ll go away
Race only exists because black people can’t stop talking about it
I wish women would get over this feminism thing
Get over it already!
Why bring up a rape that happened ten years ago?
Why can’t we all just get along?
Kumbaya my lord Kumbaya
#IJS They must hate white people. They’re always talking shit about us
#IJS secretly Black people want us dead
I need a vacation from POC. They’re just so negative. #IJS
How can she like have a white lover and be like so obviously racist? #IJS
They bring it on themselves #IJS
We’re not the problem! If you just stop talking about IT let IT go away then we can all just
get along
It’s not that I don’t want to talk about IT, I don’t know how to talk about IT, & when I try to
talk about IT, you make me feel bad. # It’sYourFault
Genius matters more than women
Ok so he used her as a punching bag so what we got Kind of Blue right? #IJS
Man Hahahaha did you see that? He knocked the shit outta her!
Fuck that if she slapped me she’d a been drug by the hair too
It’s only fair to the other female athletes that they did what they did to Caster Semenya
Boys will be boys
White folks ain’t never gone change
Just let it alone
I would say something about the misogyny but hey, it’s rap! #IJS
I don’t talk about race when I teach Amiri; it’s limiting to his art
It’s okay to have just one representative of race, right, because my syllabus is full and I really
don’t want to spend a lot of time on race
Does Chaz Bono have a penis?
Just because I don’t talk about race doesn’t mean I don’t feel things!
I don’t even bother talking to women about stuff like rape I mean they so emotional about stuff
I’m cool with you being gay and all but I don’t need you talking to me about that shit cool?
He called that nigga a fag! Hahahahaha Punk ass nigga! Pussy ass nigga!
It’s not homophobic to say That’s gay. . . I mean it’s just what people say when something is
like you know gay!
Black people don’t own the copyright on nigga. If I wanna say nigga I’ll say nigga. Nigga nigga
nigga nigga nigga
You can’t say anything anymore! People are just t
Metta Sama is a 2016 co-winner of the Robert H. Winner Award from Poetry Society of America, the author of the poetry collection, Swing at your own risk (Kelsey Street Press, 2018), the chapbooks the year we turned dragon (Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs, 2016), le animal & other creatures (Miel, 2015), After After/After “Sleeping to Dream” (Nous-zot Press, 2014) and Nocturne Trio (YesYes Books, 2012). Her debut poetry collection, South of Here was published by New Issues Press (2005) under Sama’s legal name, Lydia Melvin.
A literary scholar, prose writer, book reviewer, interviewer and poet, Sama’s work has been published in Femininities and Masculinities in Action: On Theory and Practice in a Moving Field, Bluestem, Feminist Wire, Kweli, Fence, Prairie Schooner, The Volta, Literary Hub, Brooklyn Magazine, Puerto del Sol’s Black Voices Series, Best American Experimental Writing, and elsewhere. She is a coeditor of the critical, literary activism anthology, Bettering American Poetry and has guest edited several literary journals, most recently North America Review and About Place Journal. Sama is a fellow of the Black Earth Institute and a member of Black Radish Books’ Advisory Board.
Photograph by Stephanie Pruitt-Gaines.
Navigate to the individual posts in the HORRIFIC series, below, or follow the Postcards tag at left.
