by Jessica Brophy


The headline in People magazine (May 31, 1993) reads "Lovely Meter, Rita-Made: Pulitzer prizewinner puts a new face on the Poet Laureate's job." As I read through People's profile of Rita Dove, it becomes obvious that our culture (or at least the article writer, headline writer, photographer, and Dove herself) is obsessed with race. People, a magazine for the masses, writes of Rita Dove in terms of race - race in language, race in history, race in cultures. Rita Dove is even quoted within the context of race.

Questions about the English language and race come to mind first: Isn't it ironic that the headline alludes to speakers of "pure English," the Beatles, when describing an African-American woman? When the headline refers to Rita Dove's poetry as lovely, is it also saying "black is now beautiful?" When the headline refers to Dove's meter as "Rita-made" is the writer suggesting her verse is subversive to or different from the white Shakespearean tradition of poetry? Do the words "put a new face" in the subhead really mean a "new black face?" Does the "Poet Laureate's job" in the subhead presuppose that the post was historically held by whites?

Questions of race and history come to mind next: Mona Van Duyn, the former Poet Laureate speaks of "many kinds" of American "tradition" (92). Does this comment address the racist tradition of the laureate post's white majority? Why is Dove described as "quite different" because she is first to occupy the laureate position as an African-American? Is race really a determinant of her uniqueness as a poet? Why does the writer choose to mention that "breaking racial barriers is a tradition in her own family?" Does this give Dove creditability? Why is it important to describe her novelist husband as German? Are the readers supposed to conjure ideas of his racial identity (if that exists) due to a different language or culture?

I am amazed that Rita Dove herself even speaks of race in order to set herself apart. Placed in the right corner of the photograph of Dove holding an umbrella, she is quoted as saying, "I'm a woman and a black and I write out of that. I think perhaps the woman experience is more important" (92). While recognizing her experience as a female may be more important to her writing, she also recognizes that her "blackness" influences her writing. I have a feeling she is saying what America has been programmed to read about African-American writers because Dove chooses (or the editor chooses to include) that she is black, she is a female. Dove, consciously or unconsciously, recognizes (or is a victim of) America's obsession with race. The article ends with Dove saying, "I want to break down the ivory tower. I want to reduce the anxiety that people have about poetry" (92). While the phrase "ivory tower" can be seen as a negative phrase because of its aloof or escapist connotations, the construction of the phrase gives superiority to whiteness. For even if Dove tries to break down this tower, she must first break down notions in the English language that references to "white" are more powerful, more impenetrable, and thus superior to "black" references.

As evidenced in picture magazines like People and in the half-page photograph of Dove herself, we are a nation seeking visual pleasure. The colors of black and white in America (as well as culture, language, religion, etc.) determine "race" as a supposed objective, fixed reality. We are a culture of "race" and thus we are a culture of racism. Our language, the English language, is a language of "race" and thus our language is a language of racism. If race as "race" is really a figurative way of encapsulating racism in America, then the use of race as "race" recognizes the racism in and of its language. The Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature recognizes "race" as a recurring fixture of complexity within American society: "Today race is a feature of American life riven with powerful contradictions and ambiguities; it is arguably both the greatest source of social conflict and the richest source of cultural development in America" (Guerin et al. 254). The disregard of "race" (as racism) in the English language will direct readers towards an ignorance of history, linguistics, and literature (whether multi-cultural or belonging to the canon) altogether. After defining "race" and describing the meaning of "white" and "black" in the English language, I hope to show that because of the historic and linguistic racism presupposed in "race," Rita Dove's attempts to downplay or disregard "race," (while simultaneously heralding black heroes) is an impossibility. In her poem, "Banneker," not only are her voices determined by "race," but her use of the words "black" and "white" at times support the racist and oppressive conceptions within the English language.

How is a term given meaning if the term is an illusion, is a false treatment of reality? R-A-C-E is a construct of white America and thus to give "race" a definition in the English language is to do more than this seemingly innocent task. To speak of "race" as something definitive, cultural, linguistic, scientific even, is what the English language oppressively commands from its users for the use of "race" in the English language assumes a Master and slave relationship. To speak of "race" is to speak of environmentally-produced differences, not actual discrepancies between a black man and a white man. To define "race" is useless, expect to show the Master's control of its subject, whether through their language, their lives, or their traditions. For the sake of this essay, however, exploring what "race" does not mean will perhaps present the foundation for the creation of a new word or just the rejection of the old form. It can be said that "race" is a racist term used to classify one group of peoples as superior to another. Much like Edward Said's study on the Western construct, "The Orient," the use of "race" says more of its creators, than those the creators try to separate and even elevate themselves from.

Henry Louis Gates in "Writing, "Race," and the Difference it Makes" speaks of how "race" was defined. Gates notes that "race" was a "thing," a characteristic based upon "natural" differences," "an ineffaceable quantity, which irresistibly determined the shape and contour of thought and feelings as surely as it did the shape and contour of human anatomy" (1578). This "thing" called "race," was then seen as a determinant for all other criterion - a person's biological makeup, language, beliefs, artistic traditions, gene pool, rhythm, athletic ability, cerebration, usury, and fidelity, to name a few (1579). Immanuel Kant, a proponent of "race" as a real thing, wrote in 1764 that "so fundamental is the difference between [the black and white] races of man, and it appears to be as great in regard to mental capacities as in color" (qtd. in Gates 1584). According to Kant, not only was "race" a way to explain his mental superiority towards the black "race" but he goes so far as to present the "black" color as evidence of a stupid "black race." Within this historical framework of categorizing peoples of different skin colors, Gates uses race as "race" to strongly assert that "race" dialogue, "race" in history, "race" criterion is pure fiction. He uses literary vocabulary and says, ""race" pretends to be an objective term of classification, when in fact, it is a trope" (1579). A trope (trick or tease as I would define it in this paper), is a figure of speech, not a literal use, not absolute, fixed, or inherent. To even speak of a white "race," black "race," or Jewish "race" is incorrect. It is to speak in misnomers and in metaphors (1579) rather than in correct names and literal rhetoric. This is what is meant when "race" was previously referred to as an illusion, a fabrication of difference among peoples "who more often than not have fundamentally opposed economic interests" (1579).

If "race" does not exist, then the illusion of "race" exists and the racism propagated by and alluded to within the usage of "race" exists. For as much as "race" does not exist, the insistence that it does has created a breeding ground for racism to exist and to even become popular and quite "fashionable" (Gates 1579) worldwide. If groups of individuals continue to set themselves apart due to hair color, tribal language, religious sect, or sexual preference, then "race" as fraud becomes real racism that is based upon a gross misunderstanding of humankind.

If "race" assumes racism, what is racism? Racism is thinking, acting, and justifying one's actions upon the false notion that "race" exists as race (a real "thing"). It can be said that the primary advocate that sustains racism in America is the English language. Ossie Davis speaks of the English language as his enemy: "Racism is a belief that human races have distinctive characteristics, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has a right to rule others. Racism. The English language is my enemy" (73).

The English language is a significant carrier of racism as its uses of "black" and "white" become to mean more than color. The uses of "black" and "white" in the English language are so embedded, so prone to seeming almost natural, so richly, stylistically, and freely intertwined within the system of words, that their unequal uses have become unconscious. Speakers of the English language do not consciously recognize how racially-charged words are, specifically how "black" has negative connotations and "white" positive connotations (and I would even go so far as to say denotations, for what is racism, but a belief in something that is more than a feeling, but a belief in something one believes is fact?) "Ignoring race is understood to be a graceful, liberal, even generous habit" (Morrison 257), but it does nothing to de-racialize a "race"-conscious language. It does nothing to eradicate "race" as real. It does nothing but advocates the use of a language that silences and excludes a people living on the margins of a dominant culture.

In order to prove his ideas that the English language is in fact his enemy, Davis lightly skimmed Roget's Thesaurus of the English Language and found the following. The word "whiteness" has 134 synonyms, 44 being favorable ("purity," "cleanness," "chaste," "innocent," "just," "unblemished," "fair") and only 10 seen as mildly negative ("gloss-over," "pale," "whitewash") (74). The word "blackness," on the other hand, had 120 synonyms, 60 of which were unfavorable ("wicked," "deadly," "unclean," "foul," "obscure") and none even mildly positive. Twenty of the words were directly related to "race," such as "Negro," "nigger," and "darkey" (74-75). Without figuring out percentages, it is obvious that a language (specifically American English here) built upon abstractions like justice, liberty, and equality did not intend to share equal terminology with a "race" "found" to be inferior.

Notions of "black" as negative and "white" as positive go back further than the first publication of Roget's Thesaurus, however. These notions became institutionalized in the language of the Bible and in the language of Shakespeare. Ali A. Mazrui in "Language and Race in the Black Experience: An African Perspective" finds the use of "black" as a metaphor for "evil," "void," and "death" within the English language worldwide (104). Since Christianity was a religion made victorious mostly through the efforts of white people, as Mazrui argues, then angels became "white" and the devil "black" (104). "Black" as "void" arises from the idea that blacks had no history, that their continent was living through a "dark age," one of barbarism and primitivism. Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper says, "There is only the history of the Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness . . . and darkness is not a subject of history" (qtd. in Mazrui 107). In both Julius Caesar and MacBeth, Shakespeare equates "black" with "death." In Julius Caesar, the "black sentence" (4.1) was a sentence of death against those associated with the assassination of Caesar. In Macbeth, Malcolm refers to Macbeth as "black Macbeth" (4.3), suggesting his soul is set on only murder and death.

Given the fact that "race" as race was ever so discreetly and sometimes invisibly used to champion white American notions of superiority (including autonomy, freedom, individualism, and prosperity) and to exclude all others who did not or could not fit into the white domain, and given that historically and linguistically "white" is viewed as pure, full of history, and life-giving (i.e.: salvation) and "black" is the antithesis of these three descriptions, how do African-Americans justify using a language that not only negates their history, but views the existence of the black man as counter-productive to humanity? Gustavo Perez Firmat in "Dedication" wrestles with this same question: "The fact that I / am writing to you / in English already falsifies what I / wanted to tell you. / My subject: / how to explain to you / that I / don't belong to English / though I belong nowhere else, / if not here / in English" (104).

Rita Dove, a contemporary African-American poet, attempts to reconcile these contradictions between the English language and its African-American speakers by ignoring both notions of race and "race." But like a shadow lingering behind her words, "race" creeps up and demands attention. I believe Dove's attempts to overlook "race" or her critic's applause of her ability to do so is dangerous because it is displays an attitude of indifference to the English language as a carrier of racism. In the long run, Dove is unable to disregard this racism as her voices in "Banneker" are determined by "race" and her sometimes traditional uses of "black" and "white" advocate racism against her own people.

Both critics of Dove and Dove herself comment on her poetry as transcending "race," as speaking to humanity on a universal level, using history as its guise. Arnold Rampersad marks Dove's poetry as unique, as more dignified than "the writers who came just before her" (in the 1960s and 1970s) because "instead of an obsession with the theme of race, one finds an eagerness, perhaps even an anxiety, to transcend - if not actually to repudiate - black cultural nationalism in the name of a more inclusive sensibility" (133). If Rampersad believes Dove's poetry can evoke a spirit of inclusion, he is unaware of the exclusivity of the English language. And an obsession with "race" (not racism) is a result of the language's obsession with it initially, not a writer's. Dove writes of the black experience, but blurs notions of "race" as insignificant in her poetry. In a 1993 interview with The Christian Science Monitor, she said:

As human beings, we are endowed with this incredible gift to articulate our feelings and to communicate them to each other in very sophisticated ways . . . In writing a poem, if the reader on the other end can come up and say: "I know what you meant, I mean, I felt that too" - then we are a little less alone in the world, and that to me is worth an awful lot. (17)

I agree with Dove's attempts to presently view "race" as an invisible construct in the sense that she speaks of readers as human beings. Instead of finding differences among her readers, Dove finds "worth" in mutual meaning, mutual feelings. To ignore the sophistication of racism in the English language, however, could make the mutual communication and articulation of feelings that Dove speaks of here impossible or at the least, very difficult.

Ironically, the "anonymous" English language, however, forces Dove to re-tell the history of Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806, the first black man to create an almanac and predict a solar eclipse; appointed to the commission that designed Washington D.C.) with "race"-conscious voices, not voices all human beings could feel "less alone" with. "Banneker" (1983) contains three voice categories - white voices (those of the Baltimore citizens), Banneker's voice as a black man, and Dove's voice, as an omniscient historian and advocate of her "race."

Under the auspices of Dove's pen, the white Baltimore citizens are afflicters of negativity upon Banneker's character, as they misunderstand his identity altogether.

--"Venerable, the good people of Baltimore / whispered, shocked and more than / a little afraid" (5-7) The white citizens react here as if a black man were not worthy of respect or dignity (especially since they were unaware of both his intelligence and occupation).

-- "Why else would he stay out / under the stars all night / and why hadn't he married?" (9-11) (Dove mimics what a white person would have said.) Whites cannot understand that a black man would stay out all night except to drink. Thought to be a result of his drinking, Banneker is unmarried.

--"But who would want him!" (12) (Dove suggests a typical white reaction.) Instead of asking this question, Dove asserts that because of his misperceived life as a single, eccentric drinker, no woman would want to marry him, never mind the community of Baltimore citizens.

--"I assure thee, my dear Sir!" (39) This confident, yet wrong response by the white citizens asserts that Banneker had "killed" when in fact he had just "shot at the stars" - an occupational hazard I suppose. Dove's voice is an advocate for Banneker in that she makes clear Banneker's identity confusion is a result of the white people's shock, fear, and perhaps feelings of intellectual inferiority:

--"What did he do except lie / under a pear tree, wrapped in / a great cloak, and meditate / on the heavenly bodies?" (1-4). " . . . After all it was said / he took to strong drink." (8-9). " . . . Neither / Ethiopian nor English, neither / lucky nor crazy, a capacious bird / humming as he penned in his mind / another enflamed letter" (12-16) Banneker, to Dove, was simply misunderstood as a drunk vagabond who because he did not belong to Africa or America, did not belong in Baltimore. False rumors and gossip corrupted his image within the community. Resentment was perhaps a factor as Dove describes Banneker as both "capacious" (14), able to contain much knowledge, and like a free "bird" (14) in an environment where slavery encaged many of Banneker's fellow blacks.

We hear little of Banneker's own voice and only secondhand from Dove. He is seen as both a scientific hero and a hero for his people or "race." Dove tells us: "he imagined / the reply, polite and rhetorical," (17-18) after penning an "enflamed" (15) letter to President Jefferson. "A wife? No, thank you. (24) (Dove could be predicting Banneker's own words here.) Banneker's thoughts and words are active and heated. He is also realistic in that he predicts Jefferson's reaction to merely be a political, candy-coated response that changes nothing. By rejecting the assumption that he should have a wife, little is learned of Banneker's own determination in life, but the fact that Banneker can choose one way or the other, says a great deal about a black man living in slavery-ridden America.

Dove's uses of "black" and "white" in the last stanza of "Banneker" are both negatively traditional and refreshingly revolutionary. Dove describes Banneker as a "white-maned figure stalking the darkened breast of the Union" (34-36). As a "white-maned" figure, Banneker is described literally here, as he is probably an older man perhaps possessing wisdom, knowledge, and some authority (as would a male lion). If the phrase is only taken literally, no comments on "race" are warranted. If the combination of "white" and "maned" are dissected, however, one can see how Dove falls into the trappings of "white" as supreme, particularly supremely intellectual. I believe her use of "white-maned" has both positive and negative connotations, for her main character is black, yet he takes on white-controlled traits of dominance (intellectual and social). In addition, Dove's use of "stalking" to describe Banneker's position suggests blackness as "evil."

Dove's discussion of dark elements also has both positive and negative meaning. The Union is described using both nurturing and poisonous terms. The new country is "darkened" (perhaps by its exclusive, elitist language of liberty and justice for all) and yet, it is also described as a breast - perhaps evoking images of a nurturing mother that included the outcast Banneker in their commission to build Washington D. C. Dove's use of nighttime here evokes sentiments of black as "death," but at the same time, the black breast presents a nurturing, protective, and life-giving image.

Many black poets prior to Dove's career were accused of violently using "race" in their writing - writing that became radical, sloppy, and inspired by recklessness (Rampersad 133). While I do not believe Dove is completely unaware of the role of "race" in the English language, her use of the English language will not allow her to speak to humanity as a whole without offending many of its speakers. It is impossible. Dove can only use and manipulate the racist English language. Except for the deconstruction of "race" (by Gates), the suggestion to de-racialize terms like "black" and "white" (by Mazrui), and the creation "of an Afro-American version of English" (Wideman 28), African American writers do not "belong to English" and yet they "belong nowhere else." I am skeptical of any solution that does not overhaul the whole English language and yet this seems quite a daunting task considering the Bible and Shakespeare are fixed entities. Wideman believes "it's not a question of making a little more room in the inn but tearing the building down, letting the tenants know their losses are such that not one is assured of a place, that the notion of permanently owning a place is as defunct as the inn" (29). The English language has left no room at the inn for African Americans. So where can they find a language that shelters their experience and identity? The possibilities are as seemingly invisible as the racism of "race."


Works Cited
Brodie, James Michael. Created Equal: The Lives and Ideas of Black American Innovators. William Morrow and Company: New York, 1993.

Davis, Ossie. "The Language of Racism: The English Language is my Enemy." Language in America. Ed. Neil Postman, Charles Weingartner, and Terence P. Moran. New York: Pegasus, 1969. 73-81.

Dove, Rita. "Banneker." Fustian Funhouse. Online. 13 May 2002. http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Museum/3655/dove.html#Banneker.

Firmat, Gustavo Perez. "Dedication." Latino Caribbean Literature. Ed. Virginia Seeley. Los Angeles: Paramount Publishing, 1994. 104.

Gates, Henry Louis. "Writing, "Race," and the Difference it Makes." The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. 2nd ed. Ed. David H. Richter. Boston: Bedford Books, 1998. 1576-1587.

Guerin, Wilfred L., et al., eds. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

"Lovely Meter, Rita-Made: Pulitzer prizewinner Rita Dove puts a new face on the Poet Laureate's job." People 31 May 1993: 92.

Mazrui, Ali Al'Amin. "Language and Race in the Black Experience: An African Perspective." The Dalhousie Review 68 (1989): 87-110.

McCartney, Paul. "Lovely Rita." I am the Beatles. Online. 27 April 2002. http://www.iamthebeatles.com/article1215.html.

Morrison, Toni. "Black Matter(s)." Falling Into Theory: Conflicting Views on Reading Literature. Ed. David H. Richter. Boston: Bedford Books, 1994. 256-268.

Rampersad, Arnold. "The Poems of Rita Dove." Callaloo 9.1 (1986): 52-60.

Ratiner, Steven. "In an Interview with Rita Dove." The Christian Science Monitor 26 May 1993. Literature Resource Center. Online. 27 April 2002.

Wideman, John. "The Black Writer and the Magic of the Word." The New York Times 24 Jan.1988, sec. 7: 1, 28-29.


Works Consulted
Fossett, Judith Jackson and Jeffrey A. Tucker, eds. Race Consciousness. New York: New York University Press, 1997.

Robinson, Randall. The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks. New York: Plume, 2000.

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Jessica Brophy is pursuing an M.A. in English at William Paterson University.