Let the World Be A Black Poem

When Kendrick Lamar stood on the hood of the blackest and coldest Pontiac GNX, rocking a black and white pair of Deion Nike DT Max 96, I thought of the night of the election — anxiously laying with my kids, praying for them, our country — and every day since: the numbness of defeat.

The sadness. Anger. Resentment. A feeling we have carried in our souls: this country is bullying us and it refuses to stop. 

The writer Maya Angelou says, “you will forget what people said; you will forget what people did, but you will never forget how they made you feel.”

We carry with us the feeling: Donald Trump and MAGA have been arrogant, mediocre, and bigoted. They are displaying the whiter parts of the country: rolling back rights; weaponizer religion; displaying no goodness, no mercy, or no care. He is still mad a black man won. And as if that wasn’t enough, he decides to attend the Super Bowl and we know what that means.

We know Donald Trump and MAGA only want one thing: power. We know that attending the Super Bowl, a display that cost Americans millions of dollars, isn’t just because he enjoys the game. He wanted to seem visible, powerful. He wanted to steal the show. He was rooting for the Chiefs and the beat down in the half felt like poetic justice to a weak man’s ego — his using others for his own gain and being shamed for his antics. 

We know the feeling: Americans have felt that no one is fighting for us. We have felt that no one cares to stop them. We have felt their arrogance and ignorance and bigotry. We have seen them on our jobs and in our communities and their Nazi flags and their Nazi salutes and their Nazi words. And we’ve been angry and have marched and wondered, “who is fighting for us.” Then enters Kendrick. 

The day after the election and every moment of since, I have attempted to tell my children, as my parents did, what this country is doing and the world it is creating for them. When they got up after the election, after having said “Kamala Harris,” I explained to their growing minds the whiter parts of the country. Then last night, as the halftime show began, my son said, “Kendrick! Daddy, it’s Kendrick!” I smiled.

We danced. 

What Kendrick did wasn’t just about music. It wasn’t just about entertainment. It was about a demonstration of power and freedom and visibility that we as Americans need. It wasn’t just for black people — it was for all of us. “The revolution will be televised, you picked the right time, but the wrong guy.” The revolution is not violent but artful; not behind closed doors, but right in front of our screens; not outside of us but within. This is Kendrick’s sermon to the country: we are in a bad shape, and I didn’t come to play: I came to preach.

When Samuel L. Jackson opens the performance, as the black Uncle Sam, saying, “This is The Great American Game,” it is as if he wants us to see how America is playing in our faces. To be black and Uncle Sam is to kind of tapdance at the beat of whitness. We all know the feeling when people tell us we are too loud and too black and too angry and too passionate. How they only see value in us if we are entertaining them. Or they’re controlling us. We know how dehumanizing  that is. 

This is where Uncle Sam and Trump and Drake are linked: they only want to take, and take, and take, control and control, and control. They represent all the worst parts of American history. All the repression and exploitation. All the lack of self-awareness and change. All the arrogance and fooloshness. Let’s be clear: They don’t love us. They only want to use us. And when they’re finished with us they betray us. And when that betrayal happens it hurts, deeply. And those who betray us do not deserve to know a false sense of peace.

My children are dancing and shouting, and then Kendrick performs HUMBLE. in the midst of the American flag made of black people.

James Baldwin calls this “Black English”: black people take the words and metaphors we have been given, and change their meaning. It is as if Kendrick is telling America to sit down, be humble, reflect on what you are doing to the people. It is as if he wants to remind this country you cannot get rid of black people — we built this country. 

It is as if Kendrick, as he stands above the American flag made of people who have their heads bowed, is saying that this country is attempting to erase us but it can’t. It refuses to listen to us when we say we are tired and angry and sad. At this moment in history, we needed Kendrick.

We needed this moment.

Kendrick decided to be black and brave, be black and loud, be black and courageous. 

We needed Kendrick to move from HUMBLE. to DNA. to remind us of our humanity and dignity and power. There was something spiritual and ancestral about that moment. If you know, you know. It is as he says, yes, this country takes from you, but you possess a kind of divinity, a kind of power by simply being you. 

And the moment when Serena “C Walks” in blue, doing the very thing that the media demonized her for. We see the liberated Black woman in all of her glory. She is the woman in blue, who, after another woman in blue lost months ago, represents all women and girls who dance even in the midst of struggle and inhumanity. This is more than music — this is power. 

This is the power to be yourself and to tell the truth about America. This is the power to be free and to love yourself and others in ways that we all feel seen, inspired, and protected. This is the power, in the face of the man who is causing so much harm, to tell him about himself. And when America and MAGA saw it, they knew.

They hated it because it put a mirror up to their poor definitions of American exceptionalism. 

If there is anything exceptional about our country, it is the exceptional way it avoids being honest with itself. It is the exceptional way the country has taught us to entertain ourselves to death and to lie to ourselves. It is the exceptional way it creates and protects bullies. It is the exceptional way the country has failed at loving us and reforming itself. 

Last night’s Super Bowl performance did something for us that we have all needed. It reminds us of our humanity. That things are not okay. That there is no one who is coming to save us but ourselves. That if you forget who you are and what you possess, you lose. That liberation isn’t just about blackness, it is about all of us. That art isn’t just about entertainment — it is about honesty, visibility, and liberation.

And I hear those who say, “it didn’t go far enough.” I hear those who say, “what about the person with the Palestine flag who was tackled and arrested.” And I say, I hear you. This too is American. An American reality none of us can escape. The complicated nature of our duality: we want to be free and we struggle to get free together. The complicated nature of how things go here. We all try to do the best we can, and even in that, we fail to live up to the best of what we embody.

And then there is the part of me that wants to say: can’t black people have a moment where we are artfully free and not interrupted? Can’t people read our performances as liberated and inclusive of our people’s struggles without robbing us? Can’t we hold multitudes? Can’t we just have a moment where we don’t have to fight for someone else but we can just be black and beautiful?

And then there is the part of me that says that doing what he did, how he did it, in front of whom he did, was radical and artful and loving.

He went after the country who creates the bullies and who creates the vultures and who creates those that are sustaining our ignorance and numbness and lack of critical thought. Every song and action and motion in the set addressed the rot beneath the American surface: a rot that is so often unable to see art when it’s right in front of its face.

There is so much more to say about last night, but I will say I will never forget the feeling of happiness and dancing to Kendrick with my children after having been sad and hugged them the day after the election. I will not forget the message Kendrick gave us — we heard Kendrick, we heard loud and clear. 

I will never forget how Amiri Baraka’s poem Black Art as Kendrick stood on the blackest Pontiac GNX in the blackest of ways. I will not forget the lines where Baraka says, “let there be no love poems written until love can exist freely and cleanly.” How Baraka says, “we want a black poem. And a black world.” How he says, “let the world be a Black Poem.” How Kendrick and Baraka are preaching black love and black humanity and black freedom. 

How so often we as black people have had to be quiet so others can exist. How we have had to deny ourselves so that others can be bigger. How we have had to diminish ourselves so others can be comfortable. I won’t forget when it happened to me and how it happens to everyone in so many cruel and confusing and American ways. 

I will not forget how June Jordan once said, “I must become a menace to my enemies.” And a menace we have become. We have defied logic. We have lived beyond their limited imagination. We have taken what little they gave us and made it ours. They saw blackness as a curse. We made blackness a world.

This is our hope: we will not give up on ourselves and give up on our children and give  up on our country. We will have the nerve. We will be free. And they cannot take that from us.

When Kendrick had finished, he did what needed to be done: he gave us what we needed. This country needs to be humble. You have dignity and power. Don’t get caught up in the game. Be yourself. Love your people. Love everyone. Never make yourself smaller. Artfully beat every attempt at your erasure. Turn the TV off. Go be free. Go fight. Go live. Go do it together.

Kendrick’s act was more than a performance — it was a poem, a sermon, a story, a rallying cry: MUSTARDDDD!