[Bill Dyes]

Martin:

Your “Can we not learn to get along” and all your references to the “emphasis” on skin pigmentation sound simplistic, shallow and rather insincere.

“Race is a purely social construct”.
It has also been a political construct and a scientific eugenic construct.
Whatever construct it takes has meant bad news for some group of people.

To be honest, I really have only a passing interest in Coleman Hughes and Kahlil Gibran Mohammed or even who’s President of this country.
Some are a lot more dangerous than others.

I didn’t need the death of George Floyd to tell me that in every since of the word "matter",
a black life in America has never held the same value as a white life.
A reparation check would have the same significance to me as a stimulus check. I’d spend it and forget about it.
Unless I'm asked for my vote, I have no say in what this country thinks it owes me.

I spend part of every day with my own racist thoughts and am only serious about reforming some of them.
My main interest is trying to get what’s in my head down into a poem.
It doesn’t feel remotely like a social contract and I am absolutely selfish about it.
Currently, the only helpful images I have to get there are Emily Dickenson alone in her room and Sonny Rollins alone atop the Brooklyn Bridge.

Bill