In July 2015, I was honored to to share a poem at a Speaking Down Barriers Event held at the Phyllis Wheatley Center in Greenville, SC. It was a wonderful, well attended and inspirational event that brought folks form a variety of backgrounds to discuss issues of race. These events are held monthly, so if you have not attended one, I certainly would encourage you to do so.
Below is the text of the poem that I shared. It is also published on the Speaking Down Barriers website: http://www.speakingdownbarriers.org/poems.html
Sweeter than our Carolina Tea
By KJ Gibbs
My English Grandmother never
allowed past her lips
a single bite of Spaghetti
Marinara, Lasagna or other “foreign muck”.
While some may call her racist for
it, others may point out
the hypocrisy in shunning Italian
food, while simultaneously embracing
a far east stew that the English deem “Pub
Curry.”
But my Grandmother never forgot her
Rosie the Riveter years
in the Sheffield munition factory, or
my Grandfather’s post
in Cairo that left him deaf, or the birth of her first child
in a shell shocked hospital hallway
with no doctor or electricity.
She never forgot the sound of the
bombs on blacked out streets.
So she manifested her anger, she
took her revenge for a ravaged city
in the only useless way she could: a
hate for all things German and Italian—
right down to the noodles.
You may have realized that I have a
heritage afar,
I’m first generation American, “an
anchor baby.”
As my co-worker Yolanda exclaimed
after I mentioned my English parents,
“I knew you were eating some
strange food.”
And yes, the British are known for
their love of weird food.
Yes, I’ll have the pizza with tuna
and sweetcorn in it.
Sure I’d love the prawn flavored
crisps. And TGIF!
Thank God its Fish on Friday cause
I love me some Fish N’ Chips
Yet while not a single bone of my family
is buried on American soil,
I am native born, raised in
Carolina, learned in the ways of collard
greens, cornbread, grits, and
biscuits. This food is what ties the cultures
of the South together. Take any
group of Southerners, black or Textile Mill white,
they can bond over the commonality
of a shared food tradition:
A tradition of fat back and pickled
hot peppers flavoring
share cropper staples of string
beans, potatoes, black eyed peas,
and greens. A tradition born from
never having enough.
Yet in this New South, while our
schools may be integrated,
where as much as we have moved
forward — things have also stayed
the same. Some Southerners may have
been trained with a more PC vocabulary
but the generational racism has not
been erased from their hearts.
Nonetheless, Southern cultures
raised in the isolation of slavery then segregation
have developed their own flavor — a
quilt sewn of diverse tradition and dyed
with Indigo, Sumac, and Black Walnut.
Whether it is the traditional artisan
crafts of the Gullah Geechee, the
Appalachian dulcimer twang, the colorful Haitian
dance, or the Tree Tossing Highland
Games, our cultural differences are what makes
the American South Great — not a
reason to hate.
Yet today, while more whites may
keep racial slurs private, it is not because
their colorblind— it’s because
they’ve learned to avoid the backlash.
Opting instead to create a culture of
shunning our darker skinned countrymen.
Meanwhile friends of a darker hue
are refused service
at a bar on Greenville’s supposedly
welcoming Main Street.
How shocking that in this day, an
American citizen is treated
as if he was wearing an
invisibility cloak.
Meanwhile on that same Main Street,
my black business partner
and I are harassed by a 30
something in a tie, for the crime
of walking shoulder to shoulder from
Coffee to NOMA square.
If my Grandmother was alive today,
I would tell her to forgive
the terrifying 1940’s and the
undernourished 1950’s
and take a twirl with a plate of
Mussolini linguine.
Just like today, I say to you,
South Carolina — God Damn—
black churches are still burning and
the strange fruit hanging
from bloody trees has been replaced
by the echo of a Glock.
But most damaging, we are smothering
our young, gifted, and cultured
beneath a hooded history.
Instead of celebrating a rich
God-given diversity
that could make our Carolina future
sweeter than our tea.
©Kimberly Jane Gibbs No part of
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