Behind Prejudice

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The few black men I ever saw
in my childhood were these:

men behind counters, mops, or mowers
in aprons or dungarees;

in darkness behind the gaping windows
where, driving, we locked our doors;

on TV, muscles gleaming behind
white coaches or explorers;

Cosby and Satchmo, behind wide smiles,
their comic drawls and whoops;

behind beleagured Doctor King,
men hurling bricks at cops.

So when a dred-locked thickset man
in shorts behind a stroller

grinned to see, toddling ahead,
his giggling little daughter,

behind what segregation taught me--
like bulls, they're docile or mad--

I confess I felt surprise that he
was just like a regular dad.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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Prejudice needn't include animus to be unjust.

One pleasure of writing is to discover things in the process that you didn't have in mind when you started. I thought I might find a poem in a list of all the black men I encountered in childhood, both in person and in media. There were so few. When I noticed that several had stood "behind" things, I made a rule to include "behind" in every clause. Then I got the idea to update my experiences, and, naturally, the young father walked "behind" the stroller. But there was no "behind" in the final clause about the white viewer. I took several drafts to realize that the white viewer himself is behind a screen that distorts his vision. - WSS