Important Dates in the Month of December

 December 10th is International Human Rights Day.

 December 31st is Watch Night.

December 10th was International Human Rights Day. According to the United Nations site, Human Rights Day is observed every year on 10 December — the day the United Nations General Assembly adopted, in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The UDHR is a milestone document that proclaims the inalienable rights which everyone is entitled to as a human being - regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status...This year’s Human Rights Day theme relates to the COVID-19 pandemic and focuses on the need to build back better by ensuring Human Rights are central to recovery efforts. We will reach our common global goals only if we are able to create equal opportunities for all, address the failures exposed and exploited by COVID-19, and apply human rights standards to tackle entrenched, systematic, and intergenerational inequalities, exclusion and discrimination. 10 December is an opportunity to reaffirm the importance of human rights in re-building the world we want, the need for global solidarity as well as our interconnectedness and shared humanity.”

I first heard about Watch Night in the Sincerely, Lettie podcast episode “Words for 2020, Watch Night, & the History of New Year's Day.” Lettie explained, “There are New Year’s Eve parties, there are New Year’s Day celebrations, but there’s also a very troubling side to the history whenever it comes to New Year’s Eve and also New Year’s Day.” To learn more about Watch Night, you can read the article “Watch Night Service in the Black Church in America: 150 Years After the Emancipation Proclamation” by Rev. Joan R. Harrell.

#December #InternationalHumanRightsDay #December10 #WatchNight #December31 #equality #intersectionality #intersectionalitymatters #seekjustice #socialjustice #justice #dismantleALLsystemsofoppression #humanity #love #support #community #challengethenarrative #broadeningthenarrative

Systemic Racism Series: Politics

Estimated Reading Time: 15 minutes

(TW: There are references to violence against Black people contained in this month’s blog post.)

Lisa Sharon Harper wrote, “Why does the federal government ask for the nations of origin for Asian and Latino people, tribal affiliation for American Indian people, and include ‘African American’ (a specific ethnic group within the racial category ‘black’) but does not ask ‘white’ people to identify their ethnicity or nation of origin? It’s because of power. The only racial category on the national census that did not change from 1790 to 2010 was ‘white.’ In the United States, whiteness is the centerpiece around which all else revolves. That was and is intentional. In 1751, Benjamin Franklin argued to the British ministry that due to the shrinking percentage of white people on earth, America should be kept an exclusively Anglo-Saxon colony to protect the race. In the years following the establishment of our nation, the founders followed Franklin’s lead and white became the identity of power. Race is inherently about power, and whiteness was created to define who would wield it” (Harper, 2016, pp. 149-150 in The Very Good Gospel).

I am continuing in the systemic racism series here on the Broadening the Narrative blog. To learn more about this series, you can read the first thirteen posts. I am learning and sharing as a learner, not as a teacher or an expert. Today’s post addresses systemic racism in politics.

Data

Let’s examine who dominates politics, thereby shaping policies and public opinion, as well as tactics of voter suppression.

Politicians

- US Congress: According to the CNBC article “These two charts show the lack of diversity in the House and Senate” by John W. Schoen and Yelena Dzhanova, “The House has become more diverse at a faster rate than the Senate, a CNBC analysis shows, but both chambers are still predominantly white...Here is a breakdown of the number of people in Congress by race: African American: 53 representatives, 3 senators; Asian American: 12 representatives, 3 senators; Hispanic American: 39 representatives, 4 senators...The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that in 2019, 60.4% of Americans identified as white only, excluding those who identified as Hispanic or Latino. But about 79% of Congress is white, according to the Brookings data.”

- US governors: On the Rutgers University Center for Youth Political Participation “American Governors 2019” page, it’s reported that, “Almost 88 percent of the Governors currently serving in office are White/Caucasian.”

- Current president and vice president: Donald Trump and Mike Pence are white. (This post was published December 20, 2020. Joe Biden is the president-elect and Kamala Harris is the vice president-elect.)

- Current presidential cabinet: Jasmine C. Lee wrote in the NY Times article “Trump’s Cabinet So Far Is More White and Male Than Any First Cabinet Since Reagan’s,” “If Mr. Trump’s remaining nominees are confirmed, women and nonwhites will hold six of 24 cabinet or cabinet-level positions.” The Washington Post article “Trump’s entire Cabinet is now confirmed” provides more information on Trump’s cabinet-level nominees.

Tom McCarthy wrote in The Guardian article “‘Democracy has been hijacked by white men’: how minority rule now grips America,” “White men hold 65% of elected seats nationally, according to the Reflective Democracy Campaign. About half of all federal judges (but more than 70% of Donald Trump nominees) are white men.” The Who Leads Us? site reveals that 90% of elected officials are white.

Clearly, Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian American, and Pacific Islander people are underrepresented in positions of power with decision-making authority in the United States. This isn’t because there are less qualified Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian American, and Pacific Islander people or because they aren’t running for public offices.

Voting

Voter suppression didn’t end with the passage of civil rights acts. Daniel Garisto explained in the Scientific American article “Smartphone Data Show Voters in Black Neighborhoods Wait Longer,” “Voters in predominantly black neighborhoods waited 29 percent longer, on average, than those in white neighborhoods. They were also about 74 percent more likely to wait for more than half an hour...Previous studies have found that some areas—often those that are nonwhite—lack the resources to properly accommodate their voters. But in a 2016 study, [Robert] Stein and his colleagues did find one particular culprit for long lines: voter ID laws...Areas with minority voters—who are less likely to have an ID—tend to be most affected by these laws, Stein says. The past decade has seen numerous challenges to voting, including gerrymandering (manipulating districts in a way that politically disenfranchises some voters), voter-roll purges (challenging people’s registration status to keep them from voting), and, in 2016, targeted disinformation campaigns to suppress black voters.”

In the Brennan Center for Justice article “The New Voter Suppression,” Theodore R. Johnson and Max Feldman reported, “Look at North Dakota: a federal district court found that, when the state enacted its current ID law in 2017, 19 percent of Native Americans lacked qualifying ID compared to less than 12 percent of other potential voters. Likewise, Texas permits voters to use a handgun license to vote, but not a student ID from a state university. More than 80 percent of handgun licenses issued to Texans in 2018 went to white Texans, while more than half of the students in the University of Texas system are racial or ethnic minorities.”

In The Guardian article “How Native Americans’ right to vote has been systematically violated for generations,” Nina Lakhani reported, “The rights of indigenous communities – including the right to vote – have been systematically violated for generations with devastating consequences for access to clean air and water, health, education, economic opportunities, housing and sovereignty. Voter turnout for Native Americans and Alaskan Natives is the lowest in the country, and about one in three eligible voters (1.2 million people) are not registered to vote, according to the National Congress of American Indians.”

Suzanne Gamboa reported in the NBC article “Racism, not a lack of assimilation, is the real problem facing Latinos in America,” “The narrative that Latinos are choosing not to take their place in American society does not take into account the pushback they face when they try to do so. Today, for example, Latino voters are described as a sleeping giant with the potential to make a major political impact if only they went out and voted. But this argument fails to include the attempts that can make it harder for Latinos to vote, whether through strict voter ID laws or recent attempts to question voters who are on the rolls. Gerrymandering, the drawing of electoral district lines to keep particular groups together, has packed growing Hispanic populations into fewer districts, diluting their voting strength.”

History

To see how we got here, let’s examine the history of politics in the United States.

Politicians

In The Guardian article “‘Democracy has been hijacked by white men’: how minority rule now grips America” referenced above, Tom McCarthy wrote, “The white male grip on power is also deeply entrenched, and well-insulated by historical design. It was written into the constitution, secured by the enslavement of African Americans and an economy and society built on slavery, and promulgated by generations of reinforcement and denial.”

According to the EJI report Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror, “In Louisiana in 1872, P.B.S. Pinchback became the first Black governor in America (and would be the last until 1990). The Reconstruction states sent sixteen Black representatives to the United States Congress, and Mississippi voters elected the nation’s first Black senators: Hiram Revels and Blanche Bruce...In the face of Black political and economic competition created by emancipation and progressive Reconstruction, white backlash worked to re-impose white dominance through violent repression. In 1868, white Democrats angered by growing Black support for white Republican candidates in St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, terrorized the local Black community in two weeks of attacks that left more than a hundred Black people dead...Without federal protection, Black voters were targeted in brutal attacks on election day in Mississippi and throughout the South.”

Prior to the election of Donald Trump, there has only been one Black president with the election of Barack Obama. With the election of Kamala Harris, she will become the first Black person, the first South Asian American person, and only the second person of color to hold the vice president position. Charles Curtis was the first person of color and first and only person of Native American ancestry to hold the office of vice president from 1929 to 1933. Christine Hauser wrote in the NY Times article “Before Harris, This Vice President Broke a Racial Barrier,” “In October, reporting on Ms. Harris’s preparations for a debate, the news site Indian Country Today noted that at least two Native Americans had sought the vice presidency in recent decades. One was LaDonna Harris, a Comanche citizen, a candidate for the Citizens Party in 1980 with Barry Commoner; the other, Winona LaDuke, of White Earth Nation, was the Green Party nominee for vice president in 1996 and 2000, alongside Ralph Nader. Laura Harris, LaDonna Harris’s daughter, said in an interview on Monday that she and her mother discovered more about Mr. Curtis while preparing for her campaign. ‘You want people to know that we were politically active back in the 1800s, as well as today,’ she said. ‘And we have served in government and were included in government. But he is almost a fluke,’ she added.” Eli Watkins wrote in the article “First Native American women elected to Congress: Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland”, “In New Mexico, Haaland will replace Democratic Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who vacated the seat to run for governor, and Davids will unseat Kansas GOP Rep. Kevin Yoder. Davids is a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and Haaland is an enrolled member of the Pueblo of Laguna, according to their respective campaigns. The projected victories for the two Native American women mark a milestone in the US political system.”

In the USA Today article “Latinos make up only 1% of all local and federal elected officials, and that’s a big problem,” Dianna M. Náñez reported, “In 1992, San Antonio-born Henry Bonilla was the first Hispanic Republican from Texas elected to Congress. And in 1981, Henry Cisneros became one of the first Latino mayors in the U.S. when he was elected by San Antonio voters. San Antonio had not had a Latino mayor since the 1800s, before Texas became a state. Later, Cisneros was appointed by former President Bill Clinton as U.S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development.”

According to the History, Art & Archives page “Asian and Pacific Islander Americans in Congress,” “Since 1900, when Delegate Robert M. Wilcox of Hawaii became the first Asian Pacific American (APA) to serve in Congress, a total of 63 APAs have served as U.S. Representatives, Delegates, Resident Commissioners, or Senators.” The site contains the member profiles of these 63 people as well as a more detailed history divided into “Exclusion and Empire, 1898-1941,” “From Exclusion to Inclusion, 1941-1992,” and “A Growing Diversity, 1993-2017.”

Voting

Lisa Sharon Harper wrote in The Very Good Gospel, “In 1767, Swedish Botanist Carl Linnaeus, founder of botany's taxonomy of fauna, published the twelfth edition of his Systema Naturae, which defined the first taxonomy of human social hierarchy based on skin color. Twenty years later, the US Congress made official what the courts of the American colonies had already established by precedent. The newly formed United States of America enacted the racialization of power. Congress passed the three-fifths compromise, which increased the number of members in the House of Representatives who represented districts in the slave states. Congress determined that each enslaved person would be counted as three-fifths of a human being. Congress members from the North had argued that slaves should not be factored into the populations of slave states. With the compromise, however, Congress declared that black people would be counted, but as less than human. Three years later Northerners got their way on the first national census in 1790. Enslaved black people were listed as chattel - nonhuman property - along with pitchforks and horses. In the same year, Congress passed the Naturalization Act of 1790, which declared that only free white men could become naturalized citizens. This was significant because only citizens can vote, and voting is the most basic form of the exercise of dominion...With this law in place, for the next century new immigrants to the United States could be legally categorized as white. In 1922, the US Supreme Court heard the case of Mr. Takao Ozawa, a Japanese man who argued that Japanese people are white. Ozawa had been in the country for twenty years and wanted to become naturalized. He had been blocked by the Naturalization Act of 1906, which restricted naturalization to free white people and people of African descent. The court denied Ozawa’s claim to whiteness, and, with it, his chances of becoming a citizen” (Harper, 2016, pp. 147-148).

According to the EJI report Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror referenced above, “During Reconstruction, whites of diverse political affiliations declared voting a ‘privilege’ rather than a universal right, and even some whites who had opposed slavery were wary of measures that would lead to Black voting in the North.”

In the article “How Native Americans’ right to vote has been systematically violated for generations,” referenced above, Nina Lakhani interviewed Jean Reith Schroedel, who explained, “One thing few Americans understand is that American Indians and Native Alaskans were the last group in the United States to get citizenship and to get the vote. Even after the civil war and the Reconstruction (13th, 14th and 15th) amendments there was a supreme court decision that said indigenous people could never become US citizens, and some laws used to disenfranchise them were still in place in 1975. In fact first-generation violations used to deny – not just dilute voting rights – were in place for much longer for Native Americans than any other group. It’s impossible to understand contemporary voter suppression in Indian Country without understanding this historical context.”

In The Guardian article “In 1981 a ‘task force’ intimidated voters at the polls. Will Republicans revert to their old tactics?,” Ed Pilkington wrote, “The 2020 presidential election will be the first time since Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory against Jimmy Carter in 1980 that the RNC will be able to unleash ‘ballot security operations’ on election day entirely untrammeled. And the party will be allowed to freely coordinate with Donald Trump’s re-election campaign...The Brennan Center, a nonpartisan law and policy organization, has reviewed the research and concluded the whole idea of widespread cheating is a myth, including through mail-in ballots. Outside conservative groups are also floating ambitious plans ahead of November. True the Vote, a prominent advocate of the need for ‘ballot security’ measures that others denounce as intimidation, has been telling its supporters that it will stage a November exercise that echoes the 1981 use of armed off-duty police in New Jersey...Whether or not it is effective, the RNC’s rhetoric about sending armies of poll watchers to polling places on 3 November is designed to sow seeds of doubt in voters’ minds about the integrity and safety of the electoral process...Most recently, the president has openly admitted that he is undermining the US post office as a way of hampering mail-in voting, which he claims untruthfully is vulnerable to cheating.”

Finally, in the NBC article “Trump's election fight includes over 50 lawsuits. It's not going well,” Pete Williams and Nicole Via y Rada reported, “President Donald Trump and his allies have filed dozens of lawsuits across the country in an attempt to contest the election results. Most of them have been shot down or withdrawn, and no court has found even a single instance of fraud. Of at least 57 cases to have been filed, including some not directly involving Trump but which could nonetheless affect his standing, at least 50 have been denied, dismissed, settled or withdrawn. Trump has aggressively ramped up his allegations of election fraud in the weeks since his projected loss, tweeting dozens of debunked theories. Despite the Electoral College vote this week certifying Biden's victory, Trump has still not conceded. Just five cases remain active as of Dec. 17.”

For more information, you can read the National Low Income Housing Coalition publication “A History of Voter Suppression.”

Action Steps

Complete additional research on the topic of systemic racism in politics. There are numerous examples I did not address that are important such as the historical and current racist impacts of policies. I will link additional resources at the end of the post.

Have action that follows your research and reflection.

- Support continued policy changes that dismantle systemic racism by contacting local, state, and national elected officials.

In his book The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, Bessel van der Kolk wrote, “I like to believe that once our society truly focuses on the needs of children, all forms of social support for families--a policy that remains so controversial in this country will gradually come to seem not only desirable but also doable. What difference would it make if all American children had access to high-quality day care where parents could safely leave their children as they went off to work or school? What would our school systems look like if all children could attend well-staffed preschools that cultivated cooperation, self-regulation, perseverance, and concentration (as opposed to focusing on passing tests, which will likely happen once children are allowed to follow their natural curiosity and desire to excel, and are not shut down by hopelessness, fear, and hyperarousal)?” (Van der Kolk, 2014, p. 350).

- Vote, show up, and engage in meaningful ways to dismantle systems of oppression. Do all of this under the leadership of Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian/Asian American, and Pacific Islander People of Color.

What to Expect in Future Posts

At this time, I plan to address systemic racism as seen in the Christian church in the last post of this series. I will give action steps for myself and readers and provide additional resources.

As I look at the Equal Justice Initiative calendar and read it to my kids, I see that every single day conveys at least one injustice, usually based on race. These are past and present injustices, spanning hundreds of years, demonstrating that racism in this country is not simply an individual problem. Rather, racism is a systemic problem, infecting institutions and structures. Further, this problem centers around justice, therefore it's a problem Godde is concerned about, which means I must be concerned. I don’t think systemic racism is solely a political issue but also a spiritual issue. I am called to love my neighbor, and one way I can do this is by joining the fight to dismantle systems of oppression so that all people can flourish.

(Resources are linked below.)

Videos to View

Race - The Power of Illusion

“Systemic Racism Explained”

“What Is Systemic Racism? - Immigration Policy” Race Forward video with Jay Smooth

Podcasts (for your listening pleasure and discomfort)

Footnotes with Jemar Tisby - “#EndSARS” (Almost 25 minutes into the episode voter suppression is discussed.)

Intersectionality Matters! With Kimberlé Crenshaw - “From the Base to the Face of the Party: Kamala Harris, Black Women & Misogynoir in the Election (episode #25)”

Justice in America - “Episode 5: Excluded from Democracy”

NPR - “#1735 - Whose Country 'Tis of Thee?”

Sincerely, Lettie - “The Jim Crow Series: Racial Terror, Violence, & Lynching (Part 1)”

Recommended Reading

Articles

“Black Americans in Congress” 

“For the fifth time in a row, the new Congress is the most racially and ethnically diverse ever” by Kristen Bialik

“Hispanic Americans in Congress”

“Of the 114 Supreme Court justices in US history, all but 6 have been White men” by Jessica Campisi and Brandon Griggs

“Next Congress to be Most Diverse Ever”

“White Privilege & Systemic Racism in 100+ Statistics” (Voting is the 9th of 11 categories explored on this site)

“There’s overwhelming evidence that the criminal justice system is racist. Here’s the proof.” by Radley Balko

“White men are 31 percent of the American population. They hold 65 percent of all elected offices.” by Nia-Malika Henderson

“Unique Obstacles For Asian Americans In Voting”

 

Books

Black Women in Politics: Demanding Citizenship, Challenging Power, and Seeking Justice by Julia S. Jordan-Zachery (Editor), Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd (Editor)

Mestizos Come Home! Making and Claiming Mexican American Identity by Robert Con Davis-Undiano

Side by Side/Lado a lado: The Story of Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez/La historia de Dolores Huerta y Cesar Chavez by Monica Brown (Children’s Book)

The Making of Asian America: A History by Erika Lee

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

Voting in Indian Country: The View from the Trenches by Jean Reith Schroedel

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Music (that may make you uncomfortable)

“No Humanity” by Kyla Imani

“Long Live the Champion” by KB feat. Yariel and GabrielRodriguezEMC

“Fan Mail” by Micah Bournes feat. Propaganda

“A Time Like This” by Micah Bournes 

“Too Much?” by Micah Bournes 

“Land of the Free” by Joey Bada$$ 

“Cynical” by Propaganda feat. Aaron Marsh and Sho Baraka

“Just War Theory” by Micah Bournes 

To learn more about voter suppression:

- in Navajo Nation - read The American Project article “Voter Suppression Is a Constant in Navajo Nation” by Miacel Spotted Elk

- against Asian American and Pacific Islanders - read the Time article “Asian Americans Are the Fastest-Growing Racial Group in the Electorate—But Many Face Additional Obstacles to Voting by Mail” by Anna Purna Kambhampaty

- in Georgia - read the Vox article “Georgia, 2018’s most prominent voting rights battleground, explained” by P.R. Lockhart

- in Florida - read the NPR article “Florida Republicans Take Aim At Efforts To Pay Felons' Fines So They Can Vote” by Greg Allen

- in Texas - read The Guardian article “Texas is a 'voter suppression' state and one of the hardest places to vote. Will it help Trump win?” by Alexandra Villarreal

#systemicracism #racismissystemic #racism #prejudicepluspower #dismantlewhitesupremacy #endracism #endracismnow #politics #racisminpolitics #policy #justice #loveyourneighbor #seekjustice #restorativejustice #transformativejustice #socialjustice #facethepast #healthefuture #equality #vote #showup #blog #blogger #challengethenarrative #broadeningthenarrative

"Nightmares, Daydreams, and Prophecies with Micah Bournes" Episode of BtN

***scroll down for transcript***

 

A bonus episode of the Broadening the Narrative podcast is out now! You can listen to the episode "Nightmares, Daydreams, and Prophecies with Micah Bournes" for the Broadening the Narrative podcast by clicking on any of the hyperlinked platforms below. A transcript of the episode is included below as well.

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In this episode of Broadening the Narrative, I talked with Long Beach poet, rapper, singer/songwriter, and author Micah Bournes. We discussed Micah's new book Here Comes This Dreamer. Micah answered all my questions about his book, including why it is arranged in three sections. He also read his poem "Lament for Mother Tubman," and it was a powerful experience. Order Here Comes This Dreamer for yourself or purchase a copy as a gift for someone in your life. If you like what you hear in the episode, share it with a friend. I really think that little by little, person by person, we can broaden the narrative. The music from this episode is "Broken Record" featuring Lucee by Micah Bournes and Jasmine Rodriguez from Songs with Lucee.

#broadeningthenarrativepodcast #podcast #newpodcast #podcastsofinstagram #micahbournes #nightmares #daydreams #prophecies #herecomesthisdreamer #fightevilwithpoetry #poetry #LongBeach #LBC #poet #rapper #singer #songwriter #author #artist #spokenword #hiphop #firstbook #newbook #Blacklivesmatter #Blackdreamsmatter #Blackartist #amplifymelanatedvoices #revolution #challengethenarrative #broadeningthenarrative

Transcript

Intro Music

Introduction: Hello and welcome to a bonus episode of Broadening the Narrative. This is a podcast where I talk to people who are broadening the narrative I was taught. The music for today’s episode is “Broken Record” featuring Lucee by Micah Bournes. I'm your host, Nicki Pappas. My pronouns are she/her, I’m a relentless extrovert learning how to introvert during these COVID-19 days, and I'm so glad you're here. 

Transition Music

Micah: I will settle for nothing less than equality. There is no such thing as almost equal. Don’t pay me $19.99 and expect me to be happy and say, “Close enough.” Cause I’m not gonna be. And I’m still gonna riot, and I’m still gonna protest. You know.

First Segment

Nicki: On today's episode of Broadening the Narrative, I am joined by Long Beach poet, rapper, singer/songwriter, and author Micah Bournes. We will be discussing Micah’s new book Here Comes This Dreamer. Before we begin, I wanted to give a little background. I first heard Micah’s A Time Like This album in 2018 when my friend Ruth sent me and our friend Danielle Stocker the Bandcamp link. And I am continuously changed by your work, Micah, and I can’t wait to hear what you have to say today about Here Comes This Dreamer. And thank you for coming onto the podcast.

Micah: Oh you’re more than welcome. Pleasure to be here.

Nicki: Yes. Also joining us is my cousin Brittany Perrotta. After the launch of the podcast, Brittany texted me and said, “You might be interested in connecting with my friends Emily Joy or Micah Bournes. Check them out.” I responded that for the list I was making of people I wanted to reach out to for season 2, Micah was one of them. Then, Micah posted for anyone interested in talking with him about his new book, they should contact him, so I did. And in my email, I even included, “If it helps my case, my cousin Brittany Perrotta also encouraged me to ask you about coming onto the podcast.” And Micah invited Brittany to sit in, so here we are. And thank you for setting up the call and for being here, Brittany.

Brittany: Absolutely. 

Micah: It definitely helped your case. Brittany fed me well during college, and I am forever indebted to her for it.

Brittany: It is true. It’s - the only part I did in our poetry club was I cooked for them, and they read poetry. So.

Nicki: Ah, I love that.

Brittany: Great setup.

Nicki: Well I want to give y’all an opportunity if you just want to share really quick about how you know each other.

Micah: Yeah, I mean, so we first connected because we did an internship together, but we went to the same school. I was in the undergrad, and she was in the grad school, I believe.

Brittany: Yes.

Micah: Yeah, so that’s how we connected, and we somehow ended up doing the same internship and then that’s how we, yeah, became friends.

Brittany: And then we somehow got connected when we came back from that internship, in Oregon. We had these mutual friends, and most of them were artists and poets. So we started having these little poetry club things, so that was like a, I guess a really -

Micah: Ok, so the real story - 

(laughter)

Micah: - the real story that only this podcast gets, so I had a crush on her roommate, right. Her roommate also kind of had a crush on me. It was very confusing. We would go and we would have these poetry club readings, and we would both be reading poetry about each other but not actually addressing the fact that we liked each other in real life. We would just passive aggressively read poems about these people that we have crushes on that doesn't get the hints that we’re dropping.

Brittany: It was awful, actually.

(laughter)

Micah: It was hilarious. And then -

Brittany: Micah, to be fair though, you guys were extra, but then there was the other couple -

Micah: Yes.

Brittany: - your good poet friend and my good English poet friend, and they got married, so that couple worked out. 

Micah: It was a mess. It was so many directions of crushes happening, and just all being very immature about it, and writing, well probably not that good poetry now, but at the time it felt -

Brittany: It felt great.

Micah: And everybody knew every time. Like clearly this poem is about someone in this room, and we know exactly who it’s about.

(laughter)

Brittany: That is so true. And so I just want to say again, my only part, my only participation is I cooked food, and I made some jokes, and I think I actually wrote maybe two poems in three years, so there you go. 

Micah: Oh, that’s good.

Brittany: I’m out.

Nicki: Ok, so from our conversation before I started recording, like when I was saying, “I feel like I know so much about you, but you don’t know me,” is that the story you just told, I’m like, “Yeah, that sounds like Micah.”

(laughter)

Nicki: So I’m so happy that you shared that.

Micah: No shame. It is what it is.

(laughter)

Nicki: Oh man.

Micah: Could’ve been worse, ok. I had a mild wilding out in college. That’s as wild as I got in college. 

(laughter)

Nicki: Oh, see, again, I feel like watching all your stories and things, when you said, “My ex-girlfriend called,” that whole story. And I was just like -

Micah: You know what, I don’t. I talk so much mess, I can’t even keep track of it. So I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m sure it happened.

(laughter)

Nicki: Well you said, you said, “My ex-girlfriend called,” but it was Moody, and because I know your background, I knew what you meant by Moody, and I guess people were like, “I can’t believe you’re calling one of your exes moody,” and you were like, “No, no. I have so much love for any of my exes.”

Micah: Oh yeah, yeah, people thought I was really dragging these women I dated. I’m like, “Listen, no. I’m still friends with all of them.” But yeah, no I refer to my college as my ex because I’ve changed a lot of my thinking since I graduated from there, so you know, I was talking about the school like an ex that I don’t get along with.

(laughter)

Nicki: Yes.

Micah: Who wanted some money. Because you know that’s the only reason your alma mater call you. “Oh, we’re so glad that you graduated from here. Now, would you like to donate?” No, no thank you. 

Nicki: Yes, donate and join - we always get these mailers for coming back for Homecoming, and this year, I guess it’s a Zoom Homecoming or something, so no, I won’t be coming to your Zoom Homecoming or donating. Well, can we begin with you telling us a little about yourself and your background?

Micah: Yeah. I was born and raised in Long Beach, California, come from a big family. I have five brothers and sisters. You know it’s really interesting now because most people know me as a poet and a musician and an artist, but growing up I wasn’t into any of those things. My family was more about athletics, so I played a lot of sports, and I didn’t think I liked poetry at all. I actually thought I was stupid, and it’s not because I had low self-esteem, but it’s because the way that I was taught to measure intelligence, which was, you know, you’re smart if you get straight A’s. You’re smart if you do well on standardized tests and get high scores on the SAT, et cetera, et cetera. And I wasn’t good in any of that, you know. I was the only one of my siblings who failed a class because I was terrible at math. And so to me, it wasn’t about me having low self-esteem. It was just a fact. I didn’t feel bad about it because I didn’t necessarily associate being smart with, I thought it was dorky. Like whatever, you know, I mean that’s fine. I’m stupid, some people are stupid. I’m good with my hands. I thought I was just going to do some type of manual labor, which I still see nothing wrong with, but I just thought that was my only option. And then when it came to poetry, you know, we were only exposed, I was public schooled my whole life, and we were exposed to such a narrow expression of the art form that I thought I hated poetry as well. I didn’t see myself in it. We read Shakespeare in middle school, we read Shakespeare again in high school. We read Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, et cetera, et cetera. But they wasn’t putting us onto Gil Scott-Heron, you know what I’m saying. Like maybe we read like one Langston Hughes poem in Black History Month and one Maya Angelou poem, but we weren’t really exposed to poetry that I saw myself in. It was always from a culture and a time that was so far removed from me. You know, we’re reading century-old dead white poets, and they’re expecting me as a young Black inner-city kid in Long Beach to be interested in it. And the language, I didn’t understand, the world I didn’t understand, and so again, I associated poetry with hyper-intelligent, really smart people. I would get to the end of a poem, and I’d just be like, “I don’t even know what this means, so clearly I’m not a poet. Clearly I don’t like poetry.” So anyway, that’s the most interesting part of growing up thinking I wasn’t creative, thinking I wasn’t intelligent, but then when I got into poetry later, it started with hip hop. I loved hip hop growing up, but I never associated that with intelligence because there were so many negative stereotypes about hip hop that I just thought, I saw it as a guilty pleasure, but no one told me that my interest in hip hop was an interest in something productive. And now I know I love rappers, and I love their abilities, but I was just like, “Oh, they can flow. They got dope punchlines.” But now that I am a writer, and I identify as a poet, what I liked about hip hop was the way that they incorporated all of these poetic devices, the use of alliteration and metaphor and similes and double entendres. I’m like, there’s so much intelligence there. So I’m like, oh, I did like poetry, but the type of poetry I liked was not respected, so I thought I wasn’t a part of that world. So it actually took a lot, a long time for me to get used to being seen as a poet and also even being seen as intelligent. When people started hearing my poems, they were like, “Man, you’re so smart.” I was like, “What are you talking about? I failed algebra, you know, I’m not smart.” But I think that’s part of what drives me is I know there are so many kids, and especially people of color, kids of color like me, who they go through their whole education experience thinking they’re stupid because they’re not assimilated, and that doesn’t mean you’re dumb. It just means you think different, and, yeah. So anyways, but yeah, I just think it’s ridiculous. But that’s part of the reason why I’m so passionate and I take as many opportunities as I get to go back into the school system. And I’ll do like creative writing workshops where we’re analyzing rap songs. I go to this school every year in Long Beach, this school called Wilson High School, and last time I went, we just did a poetry workshop. But the way I was teaching them all the different poetic devices was by breaking down a Fuji song, by breaking down a Common song, by breaking down a song by Joey Badass, or we’re looking for the themes, we’re looking for the poetic devices, and the kids are just stoked. And they’re like, “I love poetry.” The same kids who’d be like, “Oh, we gotta read Shakespeare again. Thou art, thou art, this thou this” so I’m like, yeah. 

Nicki: Oh, I love that so much, and it makes me think, you had posted something recently about being thought of as a spoken word artist because poet being reserved for white people. 

Micah: Well it was more of, spoken word, I do call myself a poet but it was more of when I went to read, well when I decided to write a book, I was confronted with a lot of insecurities that came up because of this distinction in the world of poetry. It’s more of a political debate with racial undertones, but they’re not really undertones. And that divide, they call it page versus stage. So you know, poets who primarily write for books and journals and publications, those are page poets. And writing for the page is quite different than writing for performance, which is what spoken word poets do. But each camp looks at the other with disdain, and the page poetry world tends to lean more traditional, more academic. They’ll study the “classic” poets, which is more mostly the white canon of the poetry that you must know, right. And then spoken word poets, spoken word poetry as an art form is more popular in urban circles, you know, inner-city and Black and brown communities. But it’s seen by many in the page poetry world as not real poetry because they say, “Oh spoken word poets, they just lean on their performance, they lean on being loud and boisterous and dramatic, but their content, their words, that’s the real poem, and their words aren’t really that deep, they don’t use that much metaphor, et cetera, et cetera.” In the reverse, there are these page poets who spoken word poets look at and say, “Oh, they might have a little bit of writing skills, but they’re so boring. They’ll read these poems that have all this depth, and they’ll read them in a way that just puts you to sleep in two seconds,” you know.

Nicki: Yeah.

Micah: It’s just monotone, but also the words themselves, a lot of spoken word poets don't like page poets because they’re so metaphorical and image driven, it’s almost like they associate being obscure with depth, and that’s not necessarily true. I don’t think that just because something is hard to understand means that there’s some deeper meaning. Maybe it’s just bad communication. So anyway, that’s the big debate, page versus stage, and unfortunately, I wish we could learn from each other, but I on several occasions, I mean there have been universities that booked me to come perform. The university itself invited me in, and then a professor at the university told his students, “Oh that guy, he’s not a poet. He’s talented, but he’s more of an actor. Those are more like dramatic monologues, but it’s not real poetry.” And so yeah, I was confronted with that again when I decided to be this person who did mostly spoken word poetry and now wanting to do a book, I started to get insecure about, “Hey, will my words not translate on the page? How can I adjust the way I write?” And a lot of the poetry in my book was written specifically for the book, but I did have a few spoken word poems that I did change the format a bit to make it really work on the page. But yeah, again, there’s so many racial undertones in this whole debate, and there's just an elitism around a lot of the academic page poetry world and thinking that is really frustrating and unnecessary because poetry was an oral art form before anything else, you know, poetry existed in every country around the world, and it was spoken first, you know. Like language talking preceded written language, and poetry has been a part of our society in the spoken form of it longer than any type of writing. So how can you say that’s not real poetry, you know? So.

Nicki: Yeah, that’s really fascinating, and thank you for taking the time to unpack that difference there between the page and stage, and all that’s behind that. Well for you specifically, what you would say shapes the poetry that you write?

Micah: You know, honestly, I really didn’t set out to do anything particular. I just, I fell in love with the art forms of hip hop and spoken word, and I mean, it was just my life, that’s it, you know. A lot of people will hear my work and be like, “Oh you talk about justice all the time,” and now I do it more intentionally, but especially the first three, four years, I wasn’t talking about justice. I’m just Black, you know. So if I, as a young Black man in America who went to a predominantly white college and had been in so many circumstances where my race was affecting the experience I was having. Well if I sit down to talk about what’s on my mind and what’s on my heart, then I’m going to be addressing issues of race, but I wasn’t sitting down like, “I’m going to address white supremacy.” No, it’s like, I’m going to tell you these stories from my life experience, and so yeah, everything shapes, every experience I’ve ever had, every conversation, every friendship, every movie I watch, every street I walk down, I find inspiration from all kinds of places. You know, one of my most popular poems is inspired by a bottle of shampoo, you know. So I tell people it’s not really about needing to go through anything extreme, whether that’s heartbreak or cloud nine in love. I think a lot of people when it comes to poetry, they think, “Well I don’t have anything to write about. I’m not going through nothing” or “I write my best stuff when my heart is broken,” you’ll hear that a lot. And I hate that idea, you know. I don’t think there’s a problem with creating beauty from ashes, but I hate the idea that poets kind of lean into the pain because the best writing comes out of that. No, not at all. The best art can, it doesn't come from pain specifically, it can come from pain, but the best art just comes from people who pay attention, who observe the world. There’s always beauty and story and narrative around you in everything. Yes, when something awful happens, but also in a bottle of shampoo. In the most cliché way possible, yes, stop and smell the roses. Because, yeah, I really don’t think that artists have any type of third eye. I just think they go through life a little bit slower, and they see what’s, really, right in front of everybody’s face, that anyone could have seen, but most people just move too fast, you know. The poem I reference is called “Normal Hair,” you know, and it’s when I was living in Oregon, and I was at a white friend’s house, and I took a shower. And I went to use his shampoo to wash my hair, I had a big Afro at the time, and the label of the shampoo, it said, ‘For normal hair.’ Now, I’m Black. I’ve been Black my whole life. I grew up in a house with 8 Black people. My hair is normal in my home. On the South Side of Chicago, my hair is normal. In, you know, in Compton, in certain parts of Long Beach, my hair is normal, so what does this mean? You know. Now the thing is, I saw that, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s weird,’ and I could’ve just been like, ‘That’s weird,’ and kept on with my day, but I didn’t. I paused. And I was like, ‘Why did this make me, why did this frustrate me reading this label?’ And I just sat down, and I started writing. I had no idea where the poem was going to go, but it ended up being about white supremacy. It ended up being about this idea that white people think they are the default human being, that they are the standard of normal and everybody else is some type of mutation or abnormality, right. But it’s a bottle of shampoo. You know what I’m saying.

(laughter)

Micah: Like that’s all. That’s all it was. That’s where it started, you know. So I’m like, what shapes my art? Being alive. Anything. Anything can shape my art. Anything if you take the time to sit down and think about it and let it - you know, every time you have some type of feeling. Well, why did that make you feel that way? Most people don’t really sit with themselves and think about their thoughts, you know. Like I thought about the thought that I had. I saw that. I was like, “That’s a stupid name.” And that, sidenote just to further illustrate the point, that same, I ended up doing some research, that same company, and this was years ago so hopefully they have got with the times and updated it, but that same company had another product, it was Garnier Fructis, and they had another product that was formulated more for people with my type of hair. But that product, it had a three word description on the bottle. It said, the first two, they’re not the prettiest words, but they’re just descriptive words. But it said, “For dry, frizzy, unmanageable hair.” Now dry and frizzy, they’re not that pretty, they’re still just descriptive. But unmanageable and normal? See, those are judgment calls. Those are judgment calls. So, to people with really white people hair, you’re normal. To people with my hair, this is unmanageable, you are unmanageable. So they’re insulting you, but then they’re also trying to play off of your insecurity to make money off of you. “Hey, do you feel like your hair is unmanageable because we’ve led you to believe it’s unmanageable because we give you messages like this all the time? Well, the great thing is we can help you. We’ve made a product for your unmanageable hair. Give us your money and take this oppression,” you know. It’s like ugh.

Nicki: Yeah.

Micah: You know. Yeah. And that’s just a bottle of shampoo, you know. So I get inspiration from anywhere and everywhere. I’ve written a poem about a tattoo on the top of a woman’s foot because I often ask about tattoos because they often have either funny or really meaningful stories, and so I said, this woman, she had sandals on, and the top of her foot, it had two roses and a dove, and it was really big. It covered her whole foot. “Hey, what’s the story behind your tattoo?” She says, “I got it to cover up another tattoo.” I said, “Well, what’d the first tattoo look like?” She said, “Oh, it said no regrets.” 

(laughter)

Micah: So I laughed, for a moment. I was like, “Wow, that’s hilarious. You regretted the tattoo that said no regrets,” but then after I got done laughing, I had this really deep spiritual moment with this woman’s foot. 

(laughter)

Micah: And I was like, “Yo, I’ve been there.” Like, “This is who I am. This is what I’m about. No regrets.” Couple weeks later, “Why in the world did I think that was a good idea? Why in the world did I think that this was good for me?” or whatever the thing is, you know. So it was just this really interesting, you know, moment that I had, and then I wrote a poem about it, so, yeah.    

Transition Music

Second Segment

Nicki: That is so applicable, I think, to anyone, like how you were saying how you’ve changed a lot since graduating, and yeah, I feel like there are so many times in these recent years where I’m just like, “How did  I ever think that?” You know, this one thing I was so sure of, and I regret the ways that did damage to real people.

Micah: Yeah.

Nicki: And yeah, so for you to find inspiration for your poetry through these types of everyday experiences that have shaped your life, but I was curious, so I have a friend, Marquis, who is a poet, and he came onto the show for season 1, and he was talking about, he creates, and he knows other people who create, he said “to live not just financially but to literally stay alive because if we keep this stuff bottled up on the inside it could do more damage.” So I was wondering how you would respond to how writing poetry has shaped your life?

Micah: Yeah, I’m going to kind of more riff off his answer. I, you know, I encourage everybody, because, again, before I started engaging creativity, I genuinely thought I was dumb. I thought I had very little to offer the world. I was just going to try to mind my business and, you know, and engaging my creativity, it really opened up so much for me, not just like, “Oh, I’m a good poet or musician and now I have a career,” but it helped me process so many things. Process my emotions. I grew up very stereotypically masculine. It’s not necessarily seen as a cool thing to be talking about your feelings all the time, but if you’re a poet, now you can, right. There’s so many things. When it comes to spiritual life, no matter what your spiritual tradition is, if you’re trying to contemplate the Divine, you know, we have a culture that’s very westernized, and everything is just about logic, you know, and even our, especially in the Christian tradition, you know, we have this very spiritual faith that believes in miracles and walking on water and spiritual warfare and Jesus resurrecting from the dead after being born of a virgin. All these miracles, miracles, miracles. 

Nicki: Right.

Micah: But then when it comes to how we really understand our theology, it’s all just like western logic and intellect, and we’re just arguing, and it’s almost like you strip all of the spirituality out of your faith. It doesn’t make any sense, but when I started engaging poetry, again, and just creativity in general, it’s a different type of knowledge. It’s a different type of intelligence that I think is necessary for holistic health as human beings, whether you’re religious or not, but especially as a Christian, when I started engaging my creativity, it helped me understand God different. It helped me think about God differently. There’s so much theology in art, you know, and it sticks so much longer. I mean I’m a kid who grew up in church and then went to a bible college, and I can tell you on one hand how many sermons I remember or the messages of them. But man, I can hear a song once, once, and never forget the chorus, or I’ll go download the song and play it on repeat, even just the way we consume it, right. Even if you have some type of talk or sermon that you really like, you’re probably going to listen to it three times in your life, but if you have a song that you love, you literally might listen to it thousands and thousands and thousands of times before you die, and whatever it’s saying is getting into your heart and head, right. So there’s so many reasons why I think creativity is important, not just if you’re trying to be a vocational artist. When I teach creative writing workshops, this is one thing I really hammer home. I say, “Look, I’m not just up here trying to help y’all become successful poets and musicians.” I title the workshop Creative Writing as a Spiritual Discipline because I think culturally we devalue the arts, and because we devalue the arts culturally, then personally we don’t give them the place that they ought to have in our lives. So for example, again, back to education, the arts are always the electives, right. What really matters is, you know, math and science and reading, and the creative things are extracurricular. You know, they are the first things to get cut if funding is low. “Oh we don’t really need a music program or a dance program or theater. We don’t really need the creative stuff. They’re nice, but they’re not necessary,” right? So this is how we think about it. So often when we go through life, everybody is creative in one way or another, but we tend to diminish the importance of the creative side of ourselves. We tend to talk about it as a hobby or whatever, right. If this is how you think about creativity, then of course it’s going to be low priority. So what ends up happening is, I’ll do these workshops and all the time older people, they’ll come up to my afterwards and they’ll say, “Oh you know, I used to paint” or “I used to write poetry” or “I used to dance” or “I used to this, I used to that, and this is really making me miss it.” And I always ask the same question. I say, “Well why’d you stop?” They say, “Well you know, life got busy. I went to grad school” or “I got married, had a couple kids” or “I got a promotion at work. I had all this responsibility. It was stressful, and I just didn’t have time for it anymore.” And I say, “Ok, let me say back to you what I just heard. You used to do this thing that helped you calm down, that helped you process all of your stress and then life got more busy and more chaotic and more stressful and you stopped doing the one thing that actually helped you destress. I guarantee you if you would come home from work and you pick up your guitar and you just play it for 15 minutes every day, you probably would be in a better state mentally and spiritually than you are right now, but you got rid of this really important way of being human, of engaging your mind and your heart and your spirit, right.” Whether it’s writing in a journal or writing poems or songs or painting or dancing, you know, creativity is important for our holistic health as human beings. And I don’t think we think about it like that.

Nicki: Right.

Micah: And so, yeah, we think about it as extracurricular, as cute but not important, and so we give it no place in our lives. But this is why I try to have the language of spiritual discipline, or even if you’re not religious, just a discipline in general. Like for example exercising. We understand as busy as you are, it’s good. You should make time to exercise because it’s healthy for you, whether you like it or not, whether you’re good at it or not. And that’s another thing, a lot of people who enjoy creativity, they feel embarrassed to engage it because they don’t think they’re good. And I say that’s not important. Again, we’re not trying to churn out, you know, all-star, superstar musicians and poets. We’re doing this because it’s healthy for us. So if we take something like exercise, right, if you like going for a jog but you’re not very fast, it wouldn’t make sense for me to be like, “Why are you wasting your time every day jogging? You’re never going to go to the Olympics. You’re never going to get a gold medal.” If you like playing basketball, I wouldn't be like, “Why do you go to the park and play basketball? You’re short and you’re 30. You’re not going to the NBA.” You know what I’m saying.

(laughter)

Micah: “Like why are you wasting your time?” “Excuse me. First of all, it’s healthy for me. Second of all, I enjoy it. Third of all, it builds community. I like meeting other people to play with,” whatever, right. We would never say that with other disciplines, and yet when it comes to our creativity, that’s what we do. “Oh I’m so embarrassed. Why do I even bother? I’m not even good at this.” Ok, but do you love it? Your poem might not be a great poem, but you wrote about something that you needed to write about. You needed to sit down for 20 minutes and think about that thing that was on your heart. It was necessary, so there’s value in that, whether or not the poem is good. This is an important spiritual discipline. It’s incredibly important. And so that’s how I think about it. So I would agree with your friend in the sense of, you know, it’s not just a career that we’re pursuing or fame that we’re pursuing or success. This is, I don’t think it’s the ultimate thing, but it’s one of the very important disciplines that I think every human should engage in in one way or another. Every human should be constantly exercising their creativity. But with that, we need to expand our understanding of creativity because people think, well you know, if you can’t sing or paint or dance or whatever, you know the stereotypical things, that you’re not creative, but it’s just not true. Everyone is creative. It’s inherently part of existing as a human. Every time you put words in a particular order, you’re expressing yourself. You’re expressing your personality every time you put an outfit on. Even people who are good at things that they think have nothing to do with creativity or have been painted as the antithesis of creativity, like math, for example. I say, “If you’re good at math, you’re good at math because you approach it creatively, because you look at the same problem that everybody else looks at and says, ‘Ain't no answer,’ and your mind says, ‘Well I could think of several possible backdoors,’ and you get creative in how you’re thinking about that math problem and then you solve it. That’s creativity.” You know if you’re good at business, at selling refrigerators, why are you a better salesperson than the next refrigerator salesman? Because you approach it creatively. You sell that narrative of the refrigerator and why this person needs it. You’re being creative with it. And so I think it’s just, I wish we would see it as central as opposed to, again, extracurricular or nonessential. Creativity is an essential part of human development. 

Nicki: Yeah, I’m so glad that you brought that up, too, even about the schools. I was a third grade teacher for a couple of years, and yeah, where we had our cuts was for music and art. Our kids would get two weeks of music while the art teacher was at a different school, and then they’d switch and get two weeks. And yeah, you could just see such a difference in the kids between my first year teaching and then my second year when we had those budget cuts made. And then also, it was because of Fight Evil With Poetry a couple of years ago, I think it was 2018, was when I decided to join in on the Facebook group for the month of April with the prompts given, and I just found so much joy in writing and so I really appreciate you and Chris Cambell?

Micah: Yeah.

Nicki: Yeah, putting those together.

Brittany: This is just a plug that’s not connected, Nicki, but Chris Cambell’s also someone who benefited romantically from our poetry club.

(laughter)

Micah: Yes, he did.

Nicki: Thank you for that tidbit.

Micah: Also writing passive aggressive poetry about the woman who was also your cousin’s roommate.

Brittany: He was there

Micah: Yes.

Nicki: Oh my gosh. That’s so - see I love these little back stories. Oh that’s fantastic. Well Micah, I am holding in my hands your book Here Comes This Dreamer that I got on August 30th, so this is just still really new for you, and I’m curious, how does it feel to have your book published?

Micah: It feels great knowing that my work is kind of like permanently sitting on people’s coffee tables and bookshelves. That’s really cool. But I don’t know, it was, everything this year has been a little bittersweet, because I worked on this book for quite a while, and I worked really hard, but you know, it came out during quarantine you know. I had all these plans of doing a nationwide book tour. I literally bought a new used car with the intention of loading the back of this SUV with just boxes and boxes of books and merch and just like literally being on the road for like four or five months and just going to town to town and anyone who would listen to my poems, I was going to read them you know. So it was kind of this really strange bittersweet like, “Yay, my book is out,” but then I was like super sad. Actually the day it came out, I was really bummed, and I wasn’t expecting to be, because I was all excited the day before, and then it came out, and I was just like, “Oh man, I can’t do no book release party,” you know. I was planning on, I already knew which poets I was going to ask to come, we was going to throw this big ol’ party in Long Beach, folx show me mad love. I do a lot of events out here anyways, so I usually get good attendance, and I was like, “Man, this is gonna be so cool when I have my book release party,” and then it just wasn’t a thing. So, but it was good to have to wrestle with that, though, because I think in the beginning of this we all were like, “Aw you know we’ll be inside for like a month maybe two,” and now we’re like, “Yo cousin...,” especially with me and my way of life and living, you know, I make a living doing events. I make a living doing primarily like conferences and college campuses with crowds of hundreds and thousands of people sometimes, and that just ain’t gonna be a thing for a while. So I had to just kind of shift. Like if I allow myself to just be bummed all the time, like “Yeah it sucks, it sucks, it sucks, I wish it was like the way it was before.” Well it’s not, you know, and so I think really my, the day that my book came out, I was like, even though the pandemic like obviously is sad for a lot of reasons, mentally I was pretty fine before the day my book came out because I was like, I’m inconvenienced, but whatever, but it was the first time where it felt like, “Man this is having a very direct effect on something that would have meant so much to me, and I can’t enjoy,” and that made me sad. But then it kind of also made me more determined to like I’m not just going to sit around and wait for this thing to be over. I’m really going to try to shift, say, “Okay I know what I can’t do, but how can I engage and express myself?” And honestly, the post that I made about podcasting, like it was kind of out of that resolve. I’m like I’m not going to sit around and just sulk that I can’t do what I wish I could do. I’m going to try to help get the word out about this book in any way I can. So you know what, anybody who wants to have me on their podcast, I’m going to talk to them. I don’t care. They can be people I know, they can be complete strangers, and it’s been really cool. I’ve had a lot of cool conversations, I’ve been on a lot of podcasts, and yeah, so, I’m glad it’s out there. And I probably wouldn’t have done this otherwise. I’m not a big, I don’t necessarily listen to podcasts, so that wasn’t one of my main promo strategies in my head, but it’s been really cool, though, really having deeper conversations about some of the things I wrote in the book.

Transition Music

Third Segment

Nicki: Yeah, I’ve seen a few people who had books come out this year expressing similar sentiments of the mixture there, and so for you on the day that it came out to, not expecting the disappointment, but yeah, just realizing that it’s there in this year of so much bittersweet. Well, I rated Here Comes This Dreamer with 5 stars on Goodreads, and I also wrote a review that I wanted to share here. I wrote, “Once I began reading, it was difficult to put down Here Comes This Dreamer by Micah Bournes. Thought-provoking, brilliant, healing, realistic yet hopeful, and uncomfortable are all adjectives I would use to describe this collection, though these descriptors all fall woefully short in capturing everything contained in the work of Micah Bournes. The three sections are tied together so seamlessly and when the title poem dropped on me, I was stunned. I will revisit these poems and recommend this book often." So I was wondering if you could explain why you arranged Here Comes This Dreamer into those three sections.

Micah: Yeah. Honestly, a lot of people, like their experience with their book, with the book, they’re like, “Oh this was so intentional,” and it really wasn’t in a lot of ways. At least not in the writing. What I did is I was just writing. I was just writing, writing, writing, and I know that even without trying to write about a particular thing, if you have a high concentration of writing in a particular time in your life, you know, you're going to be thinking about certain things, you’re going to have a certain perspective, so I knew, I was like, “I just need to get the words out, and then I’ll go back and I’ll look for the themes that are already there.” And so that’s what I did. I wrote a bunch of poems and then I selected the ones that I thought were good and I said, “Ok, these are all the poems I want in my book. Now how am I going to arrange them? Well let me read through them and see what’s there.” And I saw these three different themes, which is the three different sections. And the first was a lot about the Black experience, which is Nightmares. The second section was about relationships of all sorts. Relationships romantically, relationships with my family, friendships, things like that. And then the third section was about spirituality. And so that’s how I arranged them. I was like, “Oh alright, cool. Blackness, relationships, relationship with God and spiritual things.” So those were kind of just the sections as far as content. How I picked the names for them, again, that was - there’s actually a poem in there, in the book, called “Milo Jackson” where I say, “I wrote a whole book without a title.” And it’s true. I wrote almost the entire thing. I had no idea what it was called. I was just writing. But I saw the language of dreams in a couple poems and then I really liked “Here Comes This Dreamer,” the poem itself. I liked the message of it, so I was like, “You know what, I think I want this to be the name.” So once I picked that as the name of the book, then I went back, and I was trying to find language to tie everything together. So with the sections, I was like, “I want words that are related to dreams.” And then I also went back and pretty much I read through every poem, and it was a real simple strategy, it really wasn’t that deep. I was just like, you know what, I’m going to try to use the word, just the word dream, as many times as I possibly can in places that it makes sense. So the poems were already written, and I’m going to insert this language of dreams, both specifically the word dream but also other words related to dreams. And I was like, if I can swap out a metaphor for it to be more dream-based, then I will. So that’s kind of how it was. I recognize there was a little bit of a theme there, but then I went back and I kind of inserted it in throughout the book. But yeah, I feel like it’s just what was already there, and I just kind of, I brought it out more on purpose once I saw that it was already there. The reason I chose Here Comes This Dreamer actually as the title for the book is actually facetious. I hate the word dream, and it’s not that I have anything against dreams, but I hate the stereotypes that we have about artists and dreamers. Like, it’s a positive word, but it’s also something that people roll their eyes at. When you think about, you know, the language associated with being a creative, you know, you have phrases like “starving artist,” right, like “chasing a dream,” like we’re these people with our head in the clouds disconnected from reality. We just, we’re people who just don’t want a real job and just trying to be famous, et cetera, et cetera. But you know, if you want to be a lawyer, and you go to law school, law school’s expensive. You take out a gang of loans, you’re flat broke. No one says, “Oh, they’re a starving lawyer.” Right. And again, it’s a subtle way of devaluing creativity, right. And so I picked the word or the phrase “here comes this dreamer” as the title because in isolation, it sounds beautiful. It’s, “Oh, here comes this dreamer. That’s so pretty. Oh, it’s a book of poetry. Oh, that makes sense. Yes, poets and dreamers and artists, but then when you actually get to the poem, you realize that here comes this dreamer, it’s a phrase actually lifted out of a story in the bible, and it’s from the story of Joseph. And if you’re not familiar he was a young man with a lot of brothers, but when he was young, he had a dream of a future in which he had risen to a position of prominence and greatness. And his brothers, his older brothers, were not as great as him. Now there was a lot of reasons why his older brothers didn’t like him. He was also the favored child and got treated with special treatment, et cetera, got special gifts. However, I find it so interesting because his brothers decide, well first of all they’re contemplating killing him, but instead they decide to sell him into slavery. But as they’re talking about exactly how they’re going to betray their brother, it says they’re out standing in a field and Joseph starts walking towards them. And what do they say? They say, “Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw his body into a pit.” So when you hear the phrase “here comes this dreamer” or “he’s a dreamer,” you know culturally we act like we love dreamers, we act like we respect them, but the reality is that whether you’re talking about, you know, artists or activists who truly dream up a different world, who dream up a world that is more just, what we actually do to them is, “I have a dream,” “Come now, let us kill him and throw his body into a pit.” That’s exactly what they did. Martin Luther King was assassinated because of his dream, right. Why? Well because even if you’re dreaming up a more just world, if you’re dreaming up a world that is different from the world that exists, you become a threat to whoever is benefiting from the status quo, from the order of the current world. I don't want you to dream. If I am wealthy and privileged and doing well in this world, even if there’s a lot of oppression, you know, anybody who wants to change things is now my enemy because they are threatening my power, my privilege, my comfort, right. And that’s why I like the title of the book, because it makes people think one thing, then you get to the poem, and you’re like, “Oh, here comes this dreamer. Come now, let’s kill him and throw him into a pit.” Yeah, that is actually a more accurate picture of how our culture, of what we do, of how we view dreamers and what we do to them. So that’s kind of what the, you know, what the theme is about. But at the same time, it’s not just in a depressing way. It’s accepting that reality. Like hey I know by thinking this way, I put a target on my back, but at the same time, I have a lot of resolve, and the end of that poem shows that resolve because ultimately even though we’re often seen as outcasts and hated and sometimes killed, people who are willing to challenge things, those are the people who change things. And yeah, so at the end of the poem, I talk about, you know, people don’t have to like you, don’t have to agree with you, don’t have to believe in your vision. And I say you can't disbelieve in dreams that were never yours. You can’t, yeah, you can’t see it because it wasn’t revealed to you, you know, so whatever, that’s fine. This is my burden to bear, and that’s fine you don’t have to believe in it. So, anyways, yeah, that’s what the title’s about. 

Nicki: Yeah, that was actually going to be my next question, so you’ve answered it, because I’m just going to admit this. I didn’t even process the connection of the title to Genesis 37 and Joseph until I got to the title poem, and that was when I was completely caught off guard, and in the best way. Because, yeah, I’ve heard and read the story of Joseph so many times since childhood, but I failed to connect the title to the story of Joseph. So I love the way that you set that up, and the ways that I was challenged in my thinking as a result of that. And then, yeah, in the Afterword, you packed a lot into why you chose the title Here Comes This Dreamer that you’ve unpacked here, too, so it was very-

Micah: Isn’t it so fascinating, though, right? Again, his brothers had a lot of reasons to hate him. I understand. You read the story and you’re like, “Yeah, you know, he got special treatment and all these things,” but what did they choose to say? Here comes this dreamer. They were pissed off about the dream. They were so mad about that, more than almost anything. Like, wow. That’s crazy. Like someone’s dream makes you that angry, you know. Like, wow. That just. And it happens over and over again. You get these folks who are really dreaming up something that is just better for everybody, but again people don’t like change. No, I don’t want to dream another world. I want this. I want what I know, even if it’s not even good for you, you know. So it’s kind of crazy. 

Nicki: Yeah, that’s what - the more I learn about history of the United States specifically but then yeah, even if we look at the story of Joseph, right, like the same thing happens over and over again. It’s just so predictable, and I think I’ve just been feeling really hopeless because it’s like, ah but as soon as this happens and we think we’re on this trajectory, like the predictable pattern of behavior is gonna be the dreamer gets killed or something like that, and so it’s just so heavy.

Micah: Yeah.

Nicki: Well I had emailed you about this, so I didn’t know if you wanted to share one of your poems, read one of them from Here Comes This Dreamer? 

Micah: Oh yeah. I’ll share one for sure because you said, I want to pick one that has a really, to tell the story behind it, so I’m going to share the poem called “Lament for Mother Tubman.” I got to find it first. What page is it on?

Nicki: 52

Micah: Oh, thank you. So this poem was inspired by several different things actually. So a few years ago, when Barack Obama was still President, there was an announcement made that Harriet Tubman was going to replace Andrew Jackson on the face of the $20 bill. And at the time, it still hasn’t happened. Right now it’s another promise America has made to the Black community which it has not fulfilled, but it’s still supposed to happen. And when the announcement was made, I remember there was a lot of celebration in the Black community. I remember getting on Facebook and a lot of my Black friends was like, “Man, I can’t wait to go to the bank like, ‘Let me get 300, all Tubmans please.’” And I was laughing so hard, but even though I saw that and I was laughing at the reaction of my community, I wasn’t actually happy. It felt bittersweet to me, and if I’m going to be honest, it felt more bitter than sweet. I just found it to be a very strange way to honor a woman like that. And when I think about like, slavery was driven by greed, right. Free labor, right. And Harriet Tubman was hated, she was put on the most wanted list. She was a criminal, and there was a cash price for her capture or death, right. You’re going to honor, this nation is going to honor her, by putting her on money. That’s so weird. There’s so many better ways to do that. It just didn’t sit right with me, but I couldn’t figure out why. I know now. But the thing that helped me figure out why was I, a little later, after hearing, I came across this article about the city of Boston, and after I read the article, I’m like this, this is why I’m not celebrating her being on a $20 bill, so that’s where this poem comes from. It’s called “Lament for Mother Tubman.”

The median net worth for non-immigrant African-American households in the Great Boston region is $8. The household median net worth was $247,500 for whites.

- The Color of Wealth in Boston: A 2015 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Duke University, and the New School.

America promises to print Harriet Tubman 

on a twenty-dollar bill

A cruel and unusual honor

Let the faces of greed remain on their god 

Give Caesar what belongs to Caesar 

but keep my Momma out yo' filthy palms

Remember all the nothing that changed 

when this nation literally tokenized 

Sacagawea in fake gold 

Remember how indigenous people 

still live in squalor

You can't blackface a dollar 

and call it reparations

Newly bred Tubmans

crammed into privileged wallets 

Sardined in bank vaults like

the hulls of slave ships

Businessmen pass a pimp

a stack of Harriets to rape

a teenage sex slave with African hips 

While Mother Tubman's

daughters and sons struggle 

to keep the heat on

In Boston

a black father dies

after decades of wanting to

New England's bitterness 

finally froze his will to hope

He left his family a modest inheritance:

a suicide-note-apology

8 dollars

and a special edition Celtics Jersey

In Boston

a black mother dies

after decades of refusing to

After freedom marches and protests

After cancer stole both breasts

After spending her savings

on saving herself

She leaves her daughter 

a closet full of church hats

an award-winning

corn bread recipe

and a family Bible with

8 dollars hidden in

Philippians 4:19

My God will supply every need

America really believes they doin' us a favor 

Painting our faces on their dreams

Writing "In God We Trust" 

on this blasphemous economy

Assigning net worth to human beings

Life ought to be priceless

but only the breath of the 

highly appraised gets protected 

No wonder this nation considered us

more useful as slaves

Capitalism ascribes

an 8 dollar value to free black lives

If Mother Tubman were alive today

she would need two and a half selves

before she was worth the weight

of her very own bill

One of the frustrating things about the racial conversation in America is this idea, a lot of white people think that we’re stuck on the past. “Oh come on. You weren’t a slave. Your mom wasn’t a slave. Your grandparents weren’t slaves. You can eat in the same restaurants, you can go to the same schools. You’re living in the past.” And there’s a lot of superficial changes and progress that has been made, but I tell people all the time, I’m not mad about the past. Like, it happened, it can’t be changed. I’m not stuck on the past. I’m mad about right now. Because you’re looking at this. This was from 2015, and it said the median, so that means there was a whole lot of Black people lower than this as far as households. The median net worth of Black households in Boston and the surrounding regions was $8 versus $245,000 something for white people, you know, like $247,500 that is, for white households was the median in the same region. So when you’re looking at those, unless you actually believe that all the Black people in Boston are that much lazier than all the white people in Boston, unless you, if you believe that, ok I guess, but that’s absurd. And we know people in poverty often work the hardest. They have to, right. And so you have to acknowledge there is something institutional, systematic going on here. This makes no sense. It makes zero sense. I’m not mad about the past. I’m mad about $8 for the household, not even the Black individual. The net worth of the whole household versus $247,500 median for white households. So I get upset at the notion that we should be happy about the progress and that we’re too angry. And it’s something I say often. I say there’s no such thing as almost equal, right. So the example I like to give, you know if I got hired at a job at the same time as a white person and they decided to pay us both $20 an hour, that’s what they hired us at, and I get my first paycheck and my white co-worker gets their $20 an hour and I got paid $5 an hour, well of course I’m marching, I’m protesting, I’m marching right up into the boss’s office and say, “I demand $20 an hour. This is what, the work that I did, this is the agreement we had. I deserve it.” “Oh, ok, ok, ok. You know what, you’re right. We’ll fix it. We’ll fix it.” I work another two weeks, get another paycheck. They’re paying me $10 an hour. Well, I’m marching back up in there. “I demand $20 an hour, not 5, not 10. I want 20. That’s what we agreed. I do the same work as this person.” Ok, we can go to this dance over and over again. You can pay me 12, you can pay me 15, you can pay me 17, you could pay me $19.99, and I am going to protest and riot. And now, is $19.99 better than $5? Can I live off of it way more than I can live off of $5? Of course. Is it progress? Of course, but when we’re talking about equality, there is no such thing as almost equal. I am not going to be like, “Eh, 19 bucks, close enough.” No, I think that’s an insult to the people who came before me. There’s no such thing as almost equal. I want my $20 because that’s what I deserve because I am just as human as you and I do just as much work. But not only do I want my $20, I want my $15 for the week that you paid me 5, I want my $10 for the week that you paid me 10, I want my $5 for the week that you paid me 15. Because that’s why there’s a difference between $8 and $247,500, because even if you paid me $20 starting today, it still wouldn’t be fair. Because y’all been getting $20 forever, and you can save it, and you can pass it down, and you can leave it to your children, and you can have, you can leave a whole house to your children or $50,000 of inheritance to your children, and we inherit 8. So, so I’m not mad about the past. I’m mad about right now, you know. And the notion of being almost equal being good enough is absurd. It is absurd. Like I said, I would fight just as hard for my 1 penny as I would for getting jipped out of 15 on the hourly rate. Because why? I will settle for nothing less than equality. There is no such thing as almost equal. Don’t pay me $19.99 and expect me to be happy and say, “Close enough.” Cause I’m not gonna be. And I’m still gonna riot, and I’m still gonna protest. You know.

Transition Music

Fourth Segment

Nicki: Yeah, I feel like I don’t have anything else to ask. That was so good. But I will ask more, if that’s ok.

Micah: No that’s fine.

(laughter)

Nicki: Well, is there anything else you want to share about your work in Here Comes This Dreamer before I ask you how people can purchase a copy?

Micah: No, yeah. I mean, you know, I wrote it for people who aren’t into poetry. I was very conscious of the fact that I thought I hated poetry, you know, and so I was like, “If I write a book of poetry, I want it to be something that if a 15 year old Black kid from Long Beach picked it up and read a couple poems just out of curiosity, they would want to keep reading, you know, and so there’s a lot of folx who’ve read my book that are like, “Yo, man I usually hate poetry, but I actually rock with this.” And I’m like, “Dope.” I don’t really care, like, again, I don’t hate academic page poet world, but it isn’t where I’ve existed, and I wrote this book for people like me. And that’s the dedication. It’s like it’s “For little Black kids with big Black dreams.” That’s what the dedication page says, and that’s exactly who it’s for. Everybody else is welcome to read, but it ain’t for you, you know, like this is for Black folx. But I think you could learn a lot from it, so I would encourage folx if they appreciate anything I said in this podcast, yeah, check it out. The book is available online. You can, you know, buy it on a bunch of different online stores, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, et cetera. But also, you know, I make music as well and I’ve done albums of my older poetry, and everything I do is free downloads. You can also stream them and purchase them on iTunes, but I have a Bandcamp, micahbournes.bandcamp.com, where every album I’ve ever made is a free download. This book actually, I recorded an audio book, so I’m reading the whole book to some soft like gentle music, and that will be coming out on the 13th. That will also be on Spotify and Apple Music and on my Bandcamp for free download. And, yeah, so you can check out, my website is just my name, micahbournes.com. There’s a lot of videos of live performances as well as links to the downloads, and yeah, but the best way to support if you, you know, obviously buy the book, but I have a Patreon. Stuff has been particularly hard because of the fact that we’re in a pandemic, so I can’t really tour and do shows, so Patreon has been very helpful. If you’re not familiar, it’s just a way that you can support creatives that you believe, whose work you believe in, and it’s cool because you can give any amount you want, but you get certain perks. Like my book for example. It just came out in August, but the manuscript was on my Patreon for like 5 months before the book was even released, so anyone who gave $10 or more, you know, they got to read my book 5 months in advance. Same thing with, I just came out with a joint album called Songs with Lucee, and that whole album was on my Patreon before it was available to the public. I’m working on a new hip hop project that I’ll be uploading content there, you know, so you get behind-the-scenes stuff, you get early edition listenings. It’s pretty cool. But yeah, so you can give 5 bucks, 10 bucks, 20 bucks, however much you want, it’s on a monthly basis, you just sign up for it, and then you get a little email every time I add some new content to it.

Nicki: Awesome I’ll -

Micah: It’s patreon.com/micahbournes. Yeah.

Nicki: Awesome I’ll put all of that in the show notes.

Micah: Word.

Nicki: So that people can do that. I will say every single poem in Here Comes This Dreamer made me stop and reflect before reading the next one, and different poems for different reasons. But for sure there were ones where I would read them and realize, “This isn’t for me, it’s not about me, and that’s ok.” And that I shouldn’t have to see myself in a poem, and I shouldn’t have to imagine, “What if this was me or my kids?” to be moved to seek justice and usher in Godde’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. And just that shared humanity and believing that people really are image bearers of the Divine should be enough to propel me to live justly and to love, so I really appreciate your work and Here Comes This Dreamer.

Micah: Word. Yeah. Thanks for reading.

Nicki: Yeah. Well the last two questions here that I like to ask guests is what is your hope? So for you, what is your hope for Here Comes This Dreamer?

Micah: Oh, I don’t have any particular, like in everything I do, I just, I know that my work’s powerful, I know that I’m gifted, and I mean, I just wanted to help people, so I’m not very entrepreneurial thinking. I just kind of create work and throw it out in the world, and be like, “Alright whoever gets it, I hope it blesses you,” and that’s really it and to me, mission accomplished already because I know there’s been a lot of people who say, “Hey, this book has meant something meaningful to me. It’s grown me. It’s challenged me,” so I feel like, “Cool. Dope.” That was it. Anything else is a cherry on top, but yeah, with all of my art, I just, I know it can help folx, and so I just want people to have it and people do have it, so I’m happy.

Nicki: Well what would you want listeners to commit to after listening to this podcast episode?

Micah: I don’t want you to commit to nothing. I want you to, you know, if you think, if it makes you think, it makes you think. You know, I don’t know you, I don’t know what you need to commit to, you know. I don’t think blanketed action steps are helpful. I think everyone's context is different depending on where you live, depending on your community, depending on your color, depending on your financial resources, you know what I’m saying. Taking action looks so drastically different. For me, I’m broke. I’ve been broke my whole life, but the way I contribute to the fight for justice, I write poems. Like that is my primary resistance, advocacy, ministry if you’re a Christian, you know, that is how, that’s how I engage. I enjoy it, but I also know that my work is bigger than just me and being a poet and liking making art, and so, but I’m not going to be like, “Well, everybody should write poems for the revolution,” you know, but I fight evil with poetry. I think, again, everyone is creative in some ways, but that’s not going to be everyone’s primary way, so I’m like, yeah, I don’t really have any hopes other than think, if it makes you think, then think. Sit down with those thoughts, but I don’t know what that means, you know, for you.

Nicki: Yeah, well thank you so much, Micah, for sharing here today, and I loved our conversation so much.  

Micah: Word. Word. Yeah, thanks for the invitation.

Nicki: And Brittany, thank you for being on the call, too.

Brittany: Yes, I believe that my insight was really helpful.

Nicki: You contributed greatly.

Brittany: Thank you. Thank you.

Transition Music

Closing: As a reminder, the music from today’s episode was “Broken Record” featuring Lucee by Micah Bournes, and the full song will close out the episode. You can stream, purchase, and download Micah’s music at micahbournes.bandcamp.com. If you like what you heard today, share it with a friend. I really think that little by little, person by person, we can broaden the narrative. In addition, make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. Then, rate and review to help others find the show. Thank you to everyone who has rated the podcast so far. I also want to thank Jordan Lukens for his help with editing and Danielle Bolin for creating the episode graphic. You can access the Broadening the Narrative blog and transcripts for podcast episodes as they become available by visiting broadeningthenarrative.blogspot.com. You can find Broadening the Narrative on Instagram @broadeningthenarrative and on Twitter @broadnarrative. Season 2 will launch in February but stay tuned for another bonus episode in January. Grace and peace, friends. 

Outro Music

“Broken Record” featuring Lucee by Micah Bournes