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Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, ‘Race’ 3

 | 
Corinne Duboin
, 
Claudine Raynaud

Theorizing Diaspora, Blackness and Post-Raciality

‘It Could Have Been Me’

Quote from President Barack Obama1

Melba Joyce Boyd

Texto completo

  • 1 Trayvon Martin was an unarmed, 17 year-old teenager, who was gunned down in Sandford, Florida on Fe (...)

‘If I had a son,
he would look
like Trayvon’,
President Obama
said.

He is hand
some.
skin the
color of
coffee,
cream
and cinnamon.

slight of build,
with a physique
yet to become,
he is shrouded
under hooded
myths and
shadows
of white guilt.

grasping fists,
armed with
a package
of rainbow
colored candy,
he is stalked
while striding
across grounds
of a gated
compound;
targeted by
imaginary fears
enforcing
Americanism.

How does Trayvon
stand his ground
when he steps
beyond borders
of the reservation?

How does youth
walk away from
death aimed
at his back?

What can a
black boy do
when the man
with a gun
comes?

‘It could have
been me’,
the President
said.

‘It could have
been me...’

Notas

1 Trayvon Martin was an unarmed, 17 year-old teenager, who was gunned down in Sandford, Florida on February 26, 2012. The title of the poem is a quote from the statement President Barack Obama made in response to the senseless murder.

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