Language is everything belated

In Citizen, Rankine found power in language. But too often I found the root to racism and micro-aggressions were created through language. My passage in particular focused on the misuse of language in a hurtful and permanent way. I wanted to annotate specific cultural moments that might slip through the cracks of time, like the Rutgers Basketball Team; however, I also wanted to stress the afterlife of words misspoken, or the words that try to heal those wounds that simply won’t. I found the x-acto knife to help me achieve this conclusion visually. I created an erasure poem on the front page that was originally blank.It reads, “This late word. This presence, this manner is irrelevant. Language is everything belated.” Even though I was adding information to an originally blank page, I was still cutting away and taking from the following page. More than anything, I took the quotation from my poem, “Language is everything belated,” and spread it across these pages. I focused on the responses, apologies, and awkward formalities after words hurt another. One struck me in particular: “I didn’t mean to say that.” I cut that out of the paper and hid another word behind it: “Aloud.”I wanted this to represent the permanency of hurtful words, even if you do follow with an apology or say you did not mean to say it. The fact that you said it shows you were thinking about it anyway. At the end of this project, I am still left with one persisting question. If we understand that sometimes micro and macro aggression are maliciously intended, and if we understand that sometimes the perpetrators are ignorant and perhaps did not intend to harm anyone, how do we teach against micro aggression? Is there an appropriate way to respond to subsidize the pain felt?