[R. S. Gwynn]

I posted this poem on Facebook, asking, "Is this racist? Or just unfair?" Opinions have been mixed.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...GXw5CSFfhxyuPA

[Roger Slater]

I've read it twice, and perhaps not thought about it long enough to answer, but what the heck. I don't think it's either racist or unfair. I like it.

[Jayne Osborn]

Unlike Bob, I'm not keen on it; it's just not my kind of poetry, I guess, but that's another issue altogether....

But, like Bob, which is more to the point, I don't think it's racist or unfair either.

[Mark McDonnell]

The image of 20 giggling girls and all of them blonde, while not racist seems a bit implausible. And I think the use of Goldilocks isn't quite the subversive point that Dove seems to think it is. I think most kids, whatever their race, see Goldilocks as a spolied intruder who kind of gets what she deserves. But I think the poem works pretty well and I like it up to the last two words. Up till then I believe it as a portrait of an African American speaker justifiably at the end of their tether given current events and the history preceding them, but acknowledging the subjective nature of their emotions and irritability ("Unfair, /I know, my aggression"). The last two words seem to tip it into a sense of inevitability that these girls are going to grow up (presumably) adding to the sum of racism in the world. It feels a little like a cheap horror movie twist that doesn't convince like the rest of the poem.

Of course this reaction could just be my white fragility talking.

[John Riley]

Nothing racists or unfair. I like it. It’s about the narrator’s perceptions.

[Bill Dyes]

If you believe you live in a society that is still racist, it is certainly not unfair.
If you believe that the society is past all that, it is both racist and unfair.

Bill

[Jayne Osborn]

Originally Posted by Bill Dyes

If you believe you live in a society that is still racist, it is certainly not unfair.
If you believe that the society is past all that, it is both racist and unfair.

Bill

Heck... is it just me? It sounds profound... but I'm really struggling to unravel that one, Bill.

Jayne

[Aaron Novick]

The pun on Stonewall is offensively bad; otherwise the poem is mostly just anodyne, a bit of theory gussied up with line breaks and a clever trompe l'oeil of experience.

The theory underwriting the poem is, of course, more true than not.

The idea that this poem is racist would be laughable if I didn't live in a country that's bringing back the Gestapo. Instead, it's just sad.

[Andrew Szilvasy]

The poem doesn't strike me as good enough to be in the New Yorker, but it's not by any means bad, racist, or unfair.

If you think society is past racism, well, you're part of the problem.

Also, Novick's right that the Stonewall pun is very very bad. Kevin Young should have punted the poem entirely on that.

[Bill Dyes]

Go pack to the speaker of the poem.
Where does her 'disposition' and her 'sourness' really come from?
What is it really that's 'behind her shoulder'?

I don't believe that she believes she is being 'racist or unfair'
and i think it's because 'racism' and unfairness' are what she lives with...both 'still' and 'so far'.


I like the poem. It feels true to me. I don't know if that 'unravels' what I said before.

Bill