Race

Elizabeth Alexander

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2001

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

The Uses of Poetry

In “Race,” Alexander critiques the uses to which we put poetry. The contrasts among the three stanzas help her to develop this theme. In the first stanza, the speaker grapples with the tension between Great-Uncle Paul’s alienation from the family and his connection to the family once he reunites with the family in New York. Line 13 shows the resolution of that tension as Paul’s siblings welcome him back into the family fold. If the poem ended there, it would be a classically structured narrative about the power of family and love to overcome ruptures such as passing and geographic separation.

Instead, Alexander uses subsequent stanzas to propose alternatives to the reconciliation the first stanza enacts. The self-reflexive nature of the second stanza turns the reader’s eye to writing itself. The speaker imagines Great-Uncle as a writer who uses his “pencil markings” (Line 17) and “graphite markings” (Line 20) to pin down the concrete world of the forest around him. All the while, the wife the speaker imagines is one who feels alienated and puzzled by what she cannot understand about Paul. The wife is no more able to get at who Paul is than the reader can get at the reality of what it is like to be in a family where one member passes and the others do not. Poetry is not capable of repairing that rupture, but it can snag the reader’s attention with imagery, devices like caesuras, and themes like the importance of ancestors.

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The third stanza returns to the family story that ended so patly on Line 13, only this time, the speaker offers an alternative ending to this family story. The speaker declares, “that is where the story ends: ivory siblings who would not / see their brother without their telltale spouses” (Lines 24-25). The phrase “The one time” (Line 22) leaves unclear whether Paul continued his visits to the family solo or simply ceased to return to the family after this event. The last line of the third stanza shifts the frame as well by getting the reader to think about poetry rather than family. The craft in a poem or a story makes reality look much tidier than it is. Alexander’s poem calls attention both to the skill it takes to create meaning out of mess and the danger of confusing these artful representations with reality.

Reimagining Black Ancestors

In Black American poetry, poets frequently use acts of imagination to celebrate Black ancestors whose presence and contributions Americans have ignored due to racism. In imagining Black ancestors, poets may present these ancestors as ordinary people who managed to do the extraordinary by surviving in systems designed to destroy them. Sometimes poets present those figures as larger than life ones whose excellence allowed them to overcome racism. In “Race,” Elizabeth Alexander shows the risks in recuperating ancestors.

Great-Uncle Paul is a heroic man who makes the Oregon forests a geography that has Black people in it, even if a Black man as “an Oregon forester in 1930” (Line 8) was unimaginable. Paul, like his siblings, is one of the migrants who braved migrations far from the South. Historically, millions of ordinary Black people engaged in this kind of heroism when they left the South in the early 20th century to create more liberated lives in cities. In this guise, Paul is the archetype of Black forebearers who made modern Black identity possible, including that of the Black poet.

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Great-Uncle Paul is heroic, but he is also an ancestor who fools his wife and insults his family to maintain an identity that is “fundamentally white” (Line 3). The poet has to invent “heroic moments where the pale black ancestor stands up / on behalf of the race” (Lines 14-15) because gaps in family and American history make it unclear if Great-Uncle Paul is a hero or a self-serving man who valued himself over his racial community. The many versions of Paul the poet imagines—migrant from Alabama, Black forester, and sometimes brother—reveal that contemporary representation of Black ancestors as heroes may force us to ignore them as complex people whose values may not square with modern ones.

The Social Construction of Race

Alexander presents race as an identity that emerges from social relationships, geography, history, and culture. Alexander’s racial descriptors help to show that race is a construction. All of the siblings and Great-Uncle Paul’s wife are “pale-skinned” (Line 5) and “ivory” (Lines 18 and 24). The context of family—spouses and partners—is what it takes to determine whether a family member is Black or white. Another indication of how context shapes perception of racial identity is that siblings “in Harlem each morning ensured / no one confused them for anything other than what they were, black” (Lines 10-11), while people perceive Paul as white because he is a forester in Oregon. Geographical context determines who counts as white and who counts as Black. Paul’s ability to switch from being white to being Black simply by traveling east shows that the link between geography and identity is a fluid one.

Our understanding of race also unfolds in the context of art, specifically art like this poem, which makes the poet part of long line of “[m]any others who have told, and not told, this tale” (Lines 12, 21). The tale Alexander is interested in telling is not a simple one. It is one in which who is at fault in holding on to their notions of racial identity despite the damage to family relationships is not clear. Great-Uncle Paul’s white wife is as much one of the “telltale spouses” (Line 25) as any other wives or husbands. Although race is a construct, it is a consequential one because members of this family make it so.