“How do we define ‘professional?’” It was the warm-up question for a social justice workshop I am currently a part of. The answers ranged from clothing to conversation to language used in a workplace or to be eligible to enter a workplace. Most of us, people of color, talked about code-switching. Someone initiated a conversation about tattoos on Black men. I talked about needing to tame my hair when I was a child. Of course institutions came up—most of us grew up not knowing what happens behind institutional doors. We were told authority was and is to be respected, not questioned. We were raised to be a model minority, understand and adjust according to the system you want to walk into. Work harder than most other people; speak only when spoken to.
In the preface, Chavez invokes June Jordan’s Poetry for the People, a collective at UC Berkeley, designed to understand poetry and power simultaneously, a blueprint with step-by-step instructions on how to build community through classrooms. Jordan believed in confronting politics through the personal—in her classroom, students were encouraged to take from their own lived experiences to create emotionally impactful work and take up space in a society that denies them that. Poems were not only villanelles and sonnets, they were also a response to the murder of a fellow Chinese immigrant whose murderers walked free; also a response to a mother who was suddenly illiterate in this country where she spoke three languages but no English.
In 2020, the Poetry Foundation had to reckon with its history with systemic racism. The staff made textbook statements about “recognizing that there is much work to be done” and that they are committed to “engaging in this work,” while acknowledging that “real change takes time and dedication.” The Poetry Foundation hasn’t initiated a conversation about reallocating its $257 million endowment fund. Even as the Poetry Foundation and MFA programs have implemented community engagement initiatives and brought in more poets of color, the work has more or less been optics-oriented rather than meaningful. It’s a familiar story in academic and literary institutions across the city. While it takes time to change from the ground up, institutions are choosing to put faces up in the name of representation while the leadership and institutional values remain the same.
