Welcome to the English Classroom!

“The word Negro can be used in many different contexts.”

“The word Negro doesn’t mean what it used to!”

“The word Negro was the term preferred by African Americans post-slavery when it came to self identifying.”

Why are you telling me who I am? 

Why are you telling me my name, my history, what words should or should not offend me? You sling oppression from your vocal cords under pretense of pedagogy, your Ph.D. making it okay:

“This is my classroom, I can say what I want.” 

Are you not white before you are an educator? 

Does your status as teacher eliminate your identity as the oppressor? 

Tell me, do you justify the word to us or to yourself?

Does the word burn as it rises in your throat and escapes your lips or do you rather relish in the tingle the vulgar language leaves behind? 

You discuss MLK and make eye contact with me, searching for validation in your presentation of facts:

“Golly gee, I sure hope I’m not offending the Negr—I mean black people!” 

Or perhaps you avoid my gaze, knowing you’ll find it steady, critical, alert, waiting for you to repeat the anthem of your people: 

“As an English teacher, it is my duty…” 

Do you go home at night and relate to your spouse the titillating experience of walking a mile in your ancestral shoes? 

Do you mutter the word to yourself on the way to work, testing its mouth feel? 

Do you give yourself a moral pass for the day? For the week? For all of February? 

I hope you go home and toss and turn, remembering my levelled gaze as you told me not to get emotional about police brutality. 

I hope sleep eludes you as you ponder exactly what syntactic element cost you my respect. 

But most of all, I hope the blue light of your laptop hits your face at 3am as you alter your course documentation for next year. 

Do not tell me who I am. 

about the poet

My name is Stecie Kidimbu. Both of my names have been mispronounced for the 18 years of my life and it bothered me to no end until I realized the power of language. My French speaking Congolese father rewrote “Stacey” to give me a different story. I will never be like Stacey’s, Stacy’s or Stacie’s of this world and that is now my biggest point of pride. I am inescapably different in name and in appearance and writing and poetry have always been mediums for me to express that. Turning my tears into similes, my triumphs into semicolons and most importantly, my passions into all caps and exclamation marks. I’m currently studying English and Drama at the University of Toronto in hopes of turning these passions into my life, in hopes of making a difference. I want to spend the better part of my life not only finding the meaning in the literature around us, but making my own meanings as well. I love writing down the “ugly truths” because that’s what surrounds us most and as a black woman, I cannot afford to stay silent because that means my own story doesn’t get told. To me, poetry and language itself is at once a vessel of self discovery, an olive branch and, if you use it right, revolution.