All right.
I am just going to--
I'm going to close with the final poem in the book, which
was quoted a couple of times in the introduction.
It's called "Worthiness."
And I just want to give you a little context about this poem.
The summer of 2020, I was preparing
to leave my life in California for a job in Chicago.
And it was, as we all remember, a very painful,
complicated summer, not just because of the pandemic,
but because of the social unrest in the face
of grave, old, old, old racial injustices in this country.
And I was invited by an old friend
from college, who's a successful journalist.
This is being recorded.
I was invited to write something that I didn't--
sorry.
I really have to change that.
I was invited by someone to write about Mr George Floyd's
execution, in prose, for a popular media outlet.
And I didn't want to do it for lots of reasons.
I didn't feel I was exactly the right person.
I didn't really feel I had anything
unique to say about this.
We've been saying the same thing again and again,
over a long time.
But I felt that I should try.
And so for about three days, I just
moved language around on the page,
not really getting anywhere.
And then this poem began to assert itself.
And I realized that something in me
knew I had to try in order to find this poem, which then
eventually closed the book.
It's like 3 to 4 minutes to read, just so you know.
This will be the final poem.
It's just a series of one-line stanzas.
So each moment is its own moment.
Thank you again for being here.
Thank you for listening.
"Worthiness."
"Guns and tear gas on TV are not where I want to begin.
The rejection, for me, came from both directions.
Home was not a place in any sense,
an idea defined by its absence.
What about here?
What about now?
I know to ask myself.
Years ago, I hurt my neck in an accident, I write.
And before I can finish, I turn away from me.
Who was the first who turned away?
Some say I lack the right to complain because I still
have breath.
I try to be deliberate, to be present inside the time that
partitions the day.
Time is less a measure of what is, more
a framework of control, a structuring tool.
An hour reflects the notion that we belong
and are separate at once.
I understand so little about progress.
Some call grief complaint.
Once an acquaintance, performing both conviction and lament:
how hard it must be to walk into a room
and be neither Black nor white.
His motivation not to empathize, but to test a hypothesis,
to ask me who I was.
Not seeing, he had already decided.
I admit I fail at being present.
I prepare for the hour I lose by preparing.
The self I inhabit is fluid, shifting,
I know to remind myself.
The chokehold originates in the martial arts,
a position of active defense.
Air chokes and blood chokes are the two types.
In both instances, the purpose is
to induce an unconscious state, even death.
As the measures of day proceed, an unconscious state
becomes my objective.
You'll have to forgive me for being heavy.
Speaking to you here, like this, is the most difficult thing
I can do.
The presence it requires is agonizing, feels fatal.
On a cellular level, trauma is inscribed
into the body of the person who survives it,
scientists confirm.
Some say the word trauma is overused these days,
to the extent its meaning is diminished.
The intention of the chokehold is
to induce an unconscious state.
Unconscious states vary in nature and origin.
In waking dreams, before I wake, the tasks of the day
assert themselves.
One task is to go to the gym.
One task is to deconstruct racial constructs.
Guns and tear gas are not where I would choose to begin.
I try to be deliberate, to be present.
In a way, my to-do list seems manageable, even standard.
I reduce each task to its constituent parts
for efficiency and practicability.
In an email to a student, I explained,
to racialize is the act of assigning a racial category
to a person's body.
E.g.
an Arab from the Maghreb, his mother in the United States
is racialized as Black.
Scientists say there is no single physical attribute that
establishes a so-called race.
Scientists say trauma lives inside the body
and is passed on generationally.
Physiologically, joy is a surge of dopamine and serotonin
in the brain.
In an experience of joy, it is unclear
whether physiology or event comes first.
9 and 1/2 minutes of a knee on a neck
is not formally a chokehold.
The choke of chokehold points less to the neck of the victim,
more to the hands of the perp.
E.g.
You can choke a pen, a water hose, a clothesline.
9 and 1/2 minutes of a knee on a neck is more akin to--
and I turn away from me again.
Is one's psychology a spiritual or physiological occurrence?
If he felt scared, or threatened,
or even a pressure to do his job in a way he had fundamentally
misinterpreted, but believed in because reinforced
by the system he worked for and within,
why was his face so neutral, so casual?
The act of racialization occurs instantly,
prior to applying interpretations of gender
or age, scientists say.
In the late aughts, popular culture
felt the need to recast homophobia.
You're not scared, you're just an asshole, the meme said.
Racism is not etymologically conceived as fear.
The ism suffix forms action nouns of verbs.
E.g. baptism is the action noun of the verb baptize.
Race, by this logic, would be a verb root, racism,
the act of performing race.
The sinister connotation of racism
suggests the race being performed by racism
is sinister.
If racism exists to uphold the supremacy
of the white racial category, whiteness, by this logic,
is sinister.
I try to be deliberate, to inhabit the present moment that
agitates me into fleeing.
Being here now, with you, speaking here now,
with you is the most difficult thing I can do.
I am not being rational.
I am trying to reduce the present
into its constituent parts.
Last month, a student emailed me to say she was too scared
to go to any class but ours.
It was not a compliment.
I did not take it as a compliment.
I am tired of apologizing for the heaviness of what
I am required to discuss in order to live.
I tell the student she is worthy.
I ask her to write a poem about her worthiness.
When I turn away from the day, I enter an unconscious state,
I seek it.
Though years ago, I wrote, I want
to enter my life like a room."
Thank you so much.
[APPLAUSE]
Thanks, y'all.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you so much.
Oh.
Thanks y'all.
Y'all are lovely.
Thank you.