‘What will be the sacred words?’

Childhood (M.A. Reilly, 2022, collage)

I visited an after school program today and had an interesting conversation with four fourth grade girls who were discussing an article about Dr. King and the pain of racism today. They were at most 10-years-old. One girl said that her mom had talked with her about a white police officer who shot a Black boy (16-years-old) because he thought he had a gun. The child had a phone.  There was such abject pain in her voice as she tried to make sense of the threat caused by white violence. Who would look at a 16-year-old child and see a mortal threat? It’s a question we must keep voicing until we answer and respond, eliminating such threats to our children. These beautiful little girls who epitomize innocence carry a burden that never needed to be theres. 

A few hours later , I was home with a new copy of Elizabeth Alexander’s The Trayvon Generation and an urge to read. The opening essay returned me to the conversation the four children were having. Alexander writes, “When human beings look at other human beings in their midst and instead of seeing other human beings see a threat, see something monstrous, or don’t see at all, our very humanity is at stake” (p. 7).  She’s so right. 

How do 10-year-olds process such violence, grief, uncertainty, and fear?  What do these overwhelming feelings block out? Alexander suggests, “Our anxiety may even stifle the joy and exuberance that should characterize…childhood” (p. 7). 

Alexander tells us language is key, especially Black poetry to remember and memorialize—especially when Black people are excluded and missing from national narratives.  She closes the essay quoting Amiri Baraka’s “Ka’ ‘Ba”—

                         “We need magic

        now we need spells, to raise up

        return, destroy, and create. What will be

        the sacred words?

I hear it in my head most days: What will be the sacred words?”