Original Publication Information:
Suedomsa the Magazine August 1997 Volume One, Issue
One
Untitled Poem by Amy Tyson
Something inside me wants to just sit down
and cry
and sign and say goodbye
and dance
and prance
and sing of chance
Please don't let me fall asleep.
Heinz 47 by Dara Shifrer
Here's more PC hypocrisy. I want to flick the noses of all the people who
are saying the term "African American" with the smug air of
how-timely-and-conscious-am-I. So we've supposedly moved on from
classifying "blacks" as a color-defined group to classifying them as a
culturally defined group. When someone looks at a person and says
"African American," they're not seeing any evidence of their African
heritage. They are seeing a person of black skin and, by automatically
labeling them "African-American," implying that all people of black skin
are from Africa. They are noticing color, but covering this with a
seemingly enlightened term. If this was a legitimate widespread practice,
whites would also be designated by their proper heritage: "This
English-German-Slovenian-American just ran by..." I understand that many
use the term with pride, because it is a step up from a lot of other terms
and recognizes a heritage in people previously not even deigned that
favor. But on the societal whole, African-American is a fancy word for
"black" and we're all still paying attention to the details that don't
give any detail into the person that is a person that is a person...
