General Themes
When analyzing the verbal art items’ linguistic techniques and their intended audiences, we identified several emerging themes from the content. This includes allies acknowledging emotions of fear faced by individuals from the BIPOC community and fearing for their BIPOC family and friends, grieving victims of police brutality and systemic racism, as well as personal experiences of emotional and social violence.
1. Grieving with the BIPOC community and acknowledging lost lives
In “Black Lives Matter” by TikTok user @sophiepecoraa, they explain that “I’m not Black, but I mourn with you / I’m not Black, but I will fight for you.” While in another TikTok user @UsigeRuithe’s “Spirit Wake”, the creator also brings attention to the children whose lives were impacted by residential schools: “we feel your grief / In memory of those who cannot come home / Who are still yet to be found / Every child matters.”
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Phrases such as “I mourn with you” and “we feel your grief” convey the creators’ approach to establishing empathy. Although their life experiences and received treatment are vastly different due to their own race, they still make the effort to acknowledge the victims of racism, with the understanding that this grief and anguish is a response closely interlinked with systemic racism–namely, police brutality against Black folks and the Canadian residential schooling system for Indigenous folks.
2. Emotional and Social Violence
The verbal art pieces also shed light on the emotional and social violence faced by the BIPOC community in everyday life.In the poem “I Smell Poison” by Kiera Moody, Moody depicts the forced erasure of Indigenous identities and heritage in residential schools, who had their hair cut and had to “put together English words piece by piece saying / You are insignificant / Words in this child’s head saying / You deserve this pain and all this dread.” On the other hand, examples of microaggression and double standards are illustrated in TikTok user @djburas’s “What’s the Matter”, which describes how when a Black person takes a walk in the street, others “cross to the other side of the street gripping their purse tightly / when he wears a hoodie there must be some property he stole.” TikTok user @its_pronounced_sharn’s “I’m Really Not a Racist” takes a similar jab by narrating the point of view of self-proclaimed “non-racists”: “can I... touch your hair? I'm really not a racist but you’re not our type ideally / I'm really not a racist but where’d ya come from... really? / I'm really not a racist / On the phone you don’t sound black.”
The repetition of “I’m really not a racist” illustrates the common mentality of those who attempt to minimize the problems of their actions and create distance from the “racist person” archetype. However, they fundamentally demonstrate implicit bias through stereotyping Black folks as foreign, non-desirable persons who don’t belong. These subtle insults based on differences in race affirm the importance of speaking up about similar behaviours that occur around us, and in informing others of the impact of stereotyping and microaggressions on marginalized groups. This encourages us to confront the problem of racism not just when we see it happening, but also proactively counter it.
3. Physical Violence and Brutality
One reoccurring pattern found in almost all verbal art pieces was naming victims of brutality due to racism. Allies mentioned the names George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, who were all killed in 2020. Content creators from the BIPOC community name many more victims of racism from various years, including Sandra Bland, Emmett Till, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Sean Bell, Oscar Grant and Tamir Rice among many others. Content creators also used their verbal art pieces to express disdain for violence and brutality against the BIPOC community. Licy Be says “This is not the first time a Black person has been killed / It’s happened over and over and over again / They say repetition is like the definition of insanity / So what is that saying?” Police brutality is also particularly addressed in online verbal art and acknowledged by allies. Content creator @thisishyphen comments on brutality continuing even after the victim has died, making mention to Emmett Till and his memorial being shot with bullets by three white boys. Nade Angel Gibson’s poem describes police brutality and the lack of accountability by asking “What’s the penalty when they [police officers] shoot to kill an unarmed Black man?” and “Are you equally outraged when cop prosecutions don’t succeed?”
Justin Tierno’s “Breonna Taylor Song” also grieves for Breonna Taylor by noting that “twenty-seven years ago you were born in America / And then you lived there until you died / Policemen took your life / And how they robbed the world of you.” The direct contrast in the sentence “and then you lived there until you died” indicates the irony of how the place of her upbringing is also the very same place that caused her death. By highlighting the brutality faced by the BIPOC community and criticizing various types of brutality, allies are picking a side and standing with victims of racism.
4. ​Fear
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Recognition of the fear faced by racial minorities
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Conveying their own feelings of fear for their friends and families who are minorities and are put at risk due to racism
Patrick Keeffe expresses this in his poem titled “I Stand,” where he describes his reason for standing with Black people despite being a white man is because of his friends and family who can’t hide behind the colour of their skin. Keefe also acknowledges the fear faced by Black people, saying “my skin [white] has afforded me the privilege to walk down the street without fear.”
TikTok user @sophiepecoraa expresses a similar sentiment in their original song "Black Lives Matter," saying “I’m white / and I don’t have to live in pure fear that my life will be taken away.” Fear is used to acknowledge the pain and danger faced by people of colour, and demonstrate understanding as educated allies.