New Black
By Bettina Judd
After “Finding Your Roots”
i
You can abstract anything
if your psyche needs it. Anything
can be turned into a past to forget—
embittering thoughts that need exorcising.
When you read the words of your relative
who had been enslaved, the New Black
starts to act real old, don’it? Starts to gnaw
at that happy you sang about, Pharrell.
Ain’t it a thing to think—Black art in the hands
of the woman or the man that beat your ancestor
near to death? Now they beam and gyrate
in the square frame of an Instagram video
because so many found a way to you by your craft.
I think about this too, and I ain’t even famous.
It’s as if you are paying for those reparations
you want to talk about now. Speaking of Instagram ...
ii
Ashley Judd shattered her leg into a bunch of pieces
on a trip to the Congo she apparently needed to take
during a pandemic because she’s a humanitarian
or whatever. I don’t really know if we share
the same last name for obvious PBS Henry Louis Gates
reasons, but I don’t actually care. I ask her to run
me my money on Twitter at least once a year.
Usually when someone makes this joke where they ask
me if I am related to her, her momma, or her sister.
It’s funny because I am Black, and they are white.
It’s funny if you think slavery is funny and I don’t.
But I do like to pass along the embarrassment
of the jokester to the famous white person who may or may
not have descended from the people who branded my last name.
She never responds. But she did go to the Congo, shatter her leg,
and posted pictures of Black people caring for her. Honoring them,
she says, and lamenting that she has the privilege of disaster insurance,
never mentioning the disaster we are at home.
