[Mark McDonnell]

Hey Julie,

It's time for us to go at it again:

"I'm sick of older white men who unapologetically admit to still being racist and sexist assholes, and then seem to expect applause for having been so brave and honest as to admit it. And it's even more nauseating to me when they actually receive such applause."

Leaving out sexism, I can't think of many occasions where this (white men unapologetically admitting to racism and expecting applause) happens and is accepted by polite, liberal society. Certainly I can't think of many poems where a white person explores ambivalent feelings about race, and when they do they inevitably meet controversy and sometimes censure, rather than applause. See the Michael Dickman poem that caused Don Share to resign as editor of Poetry Magazine.

"He repeatedly signals that this ridiculous personage will only win his resentment, never his respect"

I don't read this in the poem at all. The only character who seems to be presented as ridiculous is the "little pink judge (who)
had to climb up on a box
to put the ribbon on her neck"

The black tennis player is presented as intimidating and powerful certainly, but this is from the N pov and it is surely the N attitude which is held up for questioning and examination here.

When he describes her

"cornrowed hair and Zulu bangles on her arms,
some outrageous name like Vondella Aphrodite—"

I think any intelligent reader will understand that this focus on the outward signifiers of the player's blackness, and the N seeming irritation at her "outrageous" name which he deliberately, sarcastically, gets wrong, are to be read as expressions of his small-minded prejudice and pettiness, not something he "expects applause for".

"I couldn't help wanting
the white girl to come out on top,
because she was one of my kind, my tribe,
with her pale eyes and thin lips

and because the black girl was so big
and so black,
so unintimidated,

hitting the ball like she was driving the Emancipation Proclamation
down Abraham Lincoln's throat,
like she wasn't asking anyone's permission."

The "I couldn't help" is important. It is an admission of a dark impulse toward tribalism. That "she wasn't asking anyone's permission", similarly, dramatises an attitude that white liberals are often accused of having. That black people should be somehow grateful for white people's help and allyship. I think all of this is very carefully and deliberately designed to make white readers uncomfortable. I can't imagine many people reading these lines and simply cheerleading the N.

Of course, Hoagland's poem could have made it more explicit that the N is "in the wrong" or have him more explicitly embracing and welcoming of the changes he acknowledges are happening. But this would have been polemic not poetry. The poem is deliberately designed to be uncomfortable, provocative and ambiguous. It seems to exemplify Auden's definition of poetry as the "clear expression of mixed feelings".

To play devil's advocate, doesn't the modern anti-racism movement rest on the idea, as exemplified by Robin DiAngelos "White Fragility", that every white person is inherently racist and that only by admitting this can one move forward? That to claim to be above or outside of racism, to not "see colour", is itself evidence of racism? In this case, Hoagland's would seem to be exactly the sort of poem this movement wants to see. Surely this movement can't have it both ways: on one hand to insist that racial animus permeates every aspect of social interaction and that every white person is unconsciously racist but then be outraged by a poem which explores these ideas.

I don't particularly like the poem because I can't relate to it. I never feel this kind of tribalism, whether racial or nationalistic, on the rare occasions when I watch sports. I just can't muster it up. I've no doubt it exists though, for both black and white people. I imagine there were black people in the European country where the other tennis player came from who were cheering for their "tribe" rather than their nationality.