DeMisty D. Bellinger
On Raising Black Kids
in a new century
when the civil rights movement
seemed ages ago
and one, learning about the Rev. Dr. King,
asks me if Grandma is Black and
yes, I say, she is
and that one asks if I am Black I say
yes, I am, then she reads, her five or six
year old self, more about the Rev. Dr. King
in her made-for-kids biography of the man
who fought for Black folks’ rights
and working people’s rights and
rights of women and rights of all asks
Mama, am I Black?
Well, I say, yes, but—
Yes.
That child and her sister are older and
they talk to me about what it means
when a man who brags about controlling
women, who blanketly accuses Mexicans
of raping women, who calls Black folks
like us “the Blacks” with a bitterness
we can’t unhear and what it means
for their brown friends who have brown
families from brown places and who fear
they may never see their grandparents
again. My heart aches. This is
fucking hard. And my daughter
raises her fist and says,
“We will tear down that wall.”
They are not boys. They know already
they may be queer. They know
already to fear police officers
and there’s nothing I can say to
explain the death of Black children
at the hands of police officers,
there’s nothing I can say to them
about Black girls being beaten
like grown men by white police
officers there is nothing I can say
about a woman who slept peacefully
in her bed with a man she loved
and who never woke up
again because police officers
there are no words I can give them
to protect themselves from hate—
Both daughters lean into
Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald,
John Coltrane, Bird, Dizzy,
Satchmo
they find heroes in Ruby
Bridges, Marie Curie, Barack
Obama, and Mae C. Jemison.
We show them art
we show them how to respect
art, how to love it. We show
them trees, and flowers, and
mushrooms we show them
there is beauty in the world
still
we show them, in turkeys
that saunter like dinosaurs
must’ve sauntered,
there’s beauty
still
in the stars, in the crocuses
popping up each spring
still:
Beauty. And they are
beautiful. And they’ll practice
beauty
Still.
Black is still beautiful.
DeMisty D. Bellinger is the author of the poetry collections Rubbing Elbows and Peculiar Heritage, and of the novel New to Liberty. She teaches writing in Massachusetts, where she lives with her husband and twin daughters. You can find her at demistybellinger.com.