Baraka, Sanchez, and Giovanni Discussion Board Forum Essay

Amiri Baraka is one of the most remarkable representatives of the Black Arts Movement, whose creative work often reveals the full extent, to which interracial relations in America are unjust and unfair. In this respect, it is possible to refer to the poem Somebody Blew Up America by Amiri Baraka, which reveals the deep roots of racism and injustice in the US society.
In fact, Amiri Baraka attempts to show that the modern US society is still dominated, as it has always been, by the white majority, which holds the dominant position and establishes its rules in the US. The poet attempts to reveal the hypocrisy of the ruling white elite in regard to the most important social issues, such as terror attacks, oppression of African Americans, the War in Afghanistan and others. He opens his poem as follows:
They say its some terrorist, some
barbaric
A Rab, in
Afghanistan
It wasn’t our American terrorists
It wasn’t the Klan or the Skin heads
Or the them that blows up nigger
Churches, or reincarnates us on Death Row
It wasn’t Trent Lott
Or David Duke or Giuliani
Or Schundler, Helms retiring
It wasn’t
the gonorrhea in costume
the white sheet diseases
That have murdered black people
Terrorized reason and sanity
Most of humanity, as they pleases (Baraka)
In such a way, the author is quite ironic as he shows how the ruling white elite attempts to shift the public attention from the true source of troubles many Americans suffer from from the white majority that rules toward some external forces. In this regard, the author uses intentionally the words “some terrorist” avoiding the personification of responsibility for the acts he describes in his poem.
At the same time, throughout his poem, Amiri Baraka raises rhetorical questions, which reveal the full extent to which interracial and socioeconomic relations in the US are unjust. For instance, he raises crucial questions:
Who make the credit cards
Who get the biggest tax cut
Who walked out of the Conference
Against Racism
Who killed Malcolm, Kennedy & his Brother
Who killed Dr King, Who would want such a thing?
Are they linked to the murder of Lincoln? (Baraka)
and he provides the immediate and precise response indicating clearly to the white majority and its representatives:
Who invaded Grenada
Who made money from apartheid
Who keep the Irish a colony
Who overthrow Chile and Nicaragua later (Baraka)
In such a way, the poet makes the white majority responsible for the current problems and the past tragedies in the US and the world. At the same time, the unmasking crimes of the ruling elite dominated by the whites is the typical trait of the Black Arts Movement because it emerged in the context of the high pressure and domination of the mainstream art, which was white-dominated. The poem Somebody Blew Up America is the perfect illustration of the Black Arts trends of the revelation and telling the audience the truth about interracial relations and the policy of the ruling elite.
Thus, it proves beyond a doubt that Amiri Barak attempted to reveal the lack of democratic trends in the US, which is dominated by the white majority and where rights and liberties of other racial groups are oppressed.