At first when I read “The President Has Never Said The Word Black”, I was quite confused about what exact message I was supposed to get from the poem so I decided to move on to the article, “The Grammar of Police Shootings”. This article discusses the importance of how language is used in order to manipulate the public and to downplay the severity of crimes and mistakes made by the police. Author Radley Balko displays the contrast between how civilians crimes use verbs to show intended actions such as fired, produced, and striking with the help of adjectives like numerous to show that the acts they commit were intentional. When the murder of a 10-year-old boy by a police officer occurs, phrases such as “The deputy’s gun fired one shot,” and “not clear if the gun was accidentally fired by the deputy” is used taking all responsibility away from the cop’s careless actions and instead puts the blame on unfortunate circumstances. The clear difference in how similar events are described as “circumstantial” is no coincidence. With the recent focus on police brutality, it seems that there is an importance on how to cover up the countless mistakes which lead to death made by the officers who are supposed to protect and serve, rather than teaching officers how to correctly react to situations they are placed in. It seems that now a day’s the only people police departments are meant to protect are themselves.
If Long Soldier hypothetically wrote “everything is in the language we do NOT use”, she would be discussing the downplaying of situations through elementary language in order to not draw attention to the true severity of the matters being presented. By purposely eliminating the focus on topics through vague language, we draw away attention from them, hoping whatever the author is trying to cover up will stay that way; covered up. Balko wants us to feel the dissatisfaction with how information is presented so we can better analyze future readings to see the discrepancies and truth that is being hidden about specific situations. After coming to this conclusion I then got a hint at what Parker’s poem was trying to say. The president at the time was Barack Obama, and Morgan Parker feels like he did an injustice to the black community by never addressing their struggles as black struggles. It is insinuated that while he can refer to those who are black as his “brothers and sisters” he cannot identify himself as black, as if he is afraid or embarrassed by the word. This all ties back to the language we do not use, by holding back on such an important identifying word, it creates a harmful message that one shouldn’t be aware of who they are and what role that plays into the injustices they experience. Overall these two pieces showed me that there is more to writing than picking the right words and structure to my sentences. They taught me that I have to be observant to the language I choose not to use, and to analyze why that is so and how it effects the message of my writing.
I agree with everything you said. I like how you brought up the verbs and adjectives that are used when describing a shooting done by a police officer. I also liked how you mentioned that we should look for the truth that is hidden in certain situations. It’s worded really nicely. Good job!
I like how you explained the usage of phrases such as “one shot” and “accidentally” in the article. These phrases shifts the responsibility away from the deputy that shot the child. I like how you expanded the example to a greater context of police departments today.
I absolutely love this response and your analysis! This quote, “This all ties back to the language we do not use, by holding back on such an important identifying word” really sums up the meaning behind the poem and the article. If we don’t include the important information, so much of the meaning is lost.
“This all ties back to the language we do not use, by holding back on such an important identifying word, it creates a harmful message that one shouldn’t be aware of who they are and what role that plays into the injustices they experience”. This is really well written and articulates the disastrous consequences of omission in language!
I also had the problem of not really understanding the poem at first when I read it, but I too decided to go onto the article and it was made clear what was meant with the absence of certain words. Then going back to the poem, I could see that the missing word was black and I realized how that missing word severely jeopardized the whole message.