20 Marks of a Criminal Record [Poem] - A Tribute to Devah Pager
20 Marks of a Criminal Record [Poem]
-- A Tribute to Devah Pager (1971-2018)
I have to
write:
Devah Pager died
of pancreatic cancer
two days ago, y'all —
a write up in the Times spells out
an in-depth obituary of some type called,
“When a Dissertation Makes A Difference” —
Wow.
Pancreatic cancer.
I need to eat better,
one.
Which one
will take me out?
Two.
Why live?
Three.
Because you have so much
to give
with only one
lifetime to give it,
four.
It is ok
to feel these ways,
right now —
she was that enormous
for everyone,
five.
Why I have to be Ok
with getting up at 3am
and trying to write --
papers do not write
themselves,
six.
Because she still with us
through the work she created,
seven.
And, she will always be
because the work lives on
in
and outside
of us,
eight.
I am scared I need
a serious break
from teaching
because I get sick
after sustained contact
with the students --
communicable diseases can kill,
cancer mostly does,
everyone around me
gets cancer,
nine.
But, I must go on
because teaching is the work too,
and it must be done,
just like the articles
and the peer reviews
and book reviews
and editorial boards
and the conferences
and the you can’t stop,
you cannot stop,
you can not stop it,
ten.
Because,
eleven,
Devah never did.
She was everything
they say,
I didn’t know her.
I wish we had shaken hands.
Someone said she sent
mentorship emails
between 2 and 4am —
I do that,
eleven.
Because,
when I am in my element,
as she was in her element,
you are special
as she was special,
twelve.
Because she gives us a moment
to reflect on what all this means
and where all this ends,
thirteen.
Because in a simple cross tab,
she found that black men
without a record
were less likely
to get a job
than white men
with a record,
fourteen.
Yes,
fourteen percent of Black men
without a criminal record
in the Milwaukee audit study —
the phenomenal Figure 6
reprinted over and over
and over again,
got a job,
fifteen.
While 34 percent of White men
without a criminal record
got a job,
sixteen.
And, seventeen percent of white men
with criminal records —
that two to one ratio
that always bent the staunchest
of white supremacist
in my classrooms,
got a job,
seventeen!
But the most damning
number of the cross-tab
was “five".
Just five percent of Black men
with a record
got a call back,
creating a near three to one ratio, among Blacks
comparatively — as opposed to
the two to one ratio among Whites,
eighteen.
She found,
in a dissertation
that would change us,
that criminal records matter,
yes, but so does anti-blackness
on the part of institutional gatekeepers too,
nineteen.
And, that, her work,
her presence on this earth --
for as long as we were blessed
to have it,
and her legacy
is something that we will never
be able to run away from:
because she showed up
before we were prepared to listen
and, through walking in her light,
she forced us to see
the world different,
realistically,
empirically-grounded,
science at its best
regarding the way
racial inequality looks at its worse.
She is an angel called away
to do the work
on someone
else,
right now
and forever
and more,
twenty.
Comments