As an American college graduate with a B.A. in English, you’d think I would have known about Whitman’s racism in his writing and personal life, particularly his racist attitudes toward black people in America. I didn’t, though, and I’m very chagrined by my history of enthusiasm for the poet. I suppose I can make the clarification that I am enthusiastic about much of his work, particularly Leaves of Grass and such poems as “I Sing The Body Electric” and “Song of Myself,” and not cleave to the artist as a man, nor to his politics. Saying he was against slavery while still racist does not ameliorate my unease. The institution is no more or less venomous than the attitudes and actions that enable it. One can say, “I enjoy some of his work but do not condone all of his ideas,” but that feels like a cop-out. I guess it just goes on the pile of things where I acknowledge their problematic elements and try to retain a bit of appreciation for the bits I love and have always loved.

Fuck, white folks, why can’t we do shit right? Why does everything we do get tainted by our history of, blindness to, and/or active participation in colonialism, racism, patriarchy, and total lack of intersectionality? I don’t mean to go all #WhiteGuilt on you, but damn. Fucking Whitman, man.