In Defense of Passing
by Joshua Bennett Most of us call it cloaking, though the academic term for the practice slides just as smoothly off a teenager’s tongue: holographic deracination. Within days of wide-scale release, the Times will hail this device, its attendant social phenomena, as triumphs of modern technology, inevitable advance given the speed of post-racial desire, how expensive it is to purge the murk from an infant’s skin by most other means. The machine’s inventor will make no such claims. A plainspoken woman, she was. Stanford grad, white as a lab coat. Cited her time overseas as primary inspiration; all the suffering she’d seen caste cause. The device came to her in a lucid dream, this silver ellipse small enough to wear on the wrist or lapel, just one touch and any future you choose could be yours. Soft, false flesh, draped like a new lover over your body and just as clumsily until you work out the rhythm of it, the slang, how to maneuver this cold glass suit, light as it is. Believe it or not, protest didn’t last long. Sky-high pricing kept the cloaks an upper-class concern for months, years before poor folks got a hold of any prototype worth the worry. Once they did, you would think they had stolen something worth more than a date with the quarterback, or a job interview. You would think they had killed someone important, or blown up the moon, the way cops flooded the slums, clubs in hand, beating the color off of them. Much like in the plot of any science fiction film, this poem is about a future where scientists have created new technology that they hope will change the world. I’ve been reading and analyzing Joshua Bennett’s poetry for a couple months now and I’ve always found it interesting how he makes connections with time, how our past affects our future and how we repeat our past. In this poem, Bennett tells a story of the future. He describes the discover and implementation of “holographic deracination” in a future society and what it means to be ourselves. To start off, I’d like to look at Bennett’s word choice. I’ve always enjoyed Bennett’s simple way of incorporating fun vocabulary into his poetry without appearing awkward or contrived. He begins the poem, “most of us call it cloaking”. Cloaking is not a word I often use but the connotation of the word is important to setting the mood of the poem. Hiding, covering, secrecy, and deception go along with the idea of “cloaking” yourself. Bennett then introduces “holographic deracination” which describes the new technology he will explain. “Deracination” meaning “to isolate or alienate from a native or customary culture or environment” and “Holographic” meaning simply, a hologram image. It's a very sci-fi thought to give humans this ability to digitally change themselves in this way. It's also a very important phrase that should leave an impact on the reader. The subject matter of this poem is race and how we interpret someone’s race into our definition of them as a person. The discovery of this new technology is made by a “plainspoken woman” who is “white as a lab coat”. It’s significant to the meaning of the poem that she creates this device out of sympathy for what she sees “overseas” (I’m assuming she is part of a Doctors Without Borders-type organization). Her motivation is this misplaced sympathy for the people she finds that makes her believe she is helping them. The result is the creation of a device that will give anyone the ability to change themselves. Bennett delves into the idea that people of color are automatically assumed to be of less worth and undesired. This idea translates the message of the poem by explaining the pity the woman feels and the cops’ reaction at the end of the poem. The main message of this poem is the way minority groups are viewed. I think the best word for these feelings is pity. I think to pity a person or a specific group is often very insulting and completely ignorant. As Americans, we tend to look at “third world countries” a certain way or countries that follow stricter religious or moral codes than we do. With people, we've had about 400+ years since the colonization of the United States to develop opinions on groups of people that have grown into deep-rooted hatred and institutionalized racism. After this poem, I find myself reflecting on the value of an individual’s opinion in an unfamiliar area and the privileges many of us hold. Bennett’s poem to me read as a call-out for the tendencies of privileged people to look at the less-fortunate (in cases of wealth) and the behavior of those who still maintain dated and racist views about the worth of a skin color.
1 Comment
Dylan
3/8/2017 07:47:11 am
As a Science Fiction fan myself, this type of poem stands out to me. Your analysis about a new technology, believed to help human kind, is a common theme in science fiction and is one that I love to see. I like your descriptiveness of the poem and the words you used to analyze it.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
the authorcami (17) archives
January 2017
categories |