18 pages • 36 minutes read
We Are Not Responsible
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Systemic Racism
“We Are Not Responsible” focuses on systemic racism, or authoritative power is wielded against oppressed groups. This is an examination of the structures that perpetuate racism, rather than a poem about an individual experience of being discriminated against. Mullen uses the first-person plural pronouns “we” and “our” throughout the poem to clarify that the speaker is not one human being, but rather an entwined collection of people and systems. The speaker referred to as “we” is contrasted with the addressee of the poem, who is only referred to as “you.” The singular pronoun here represents one member of an oppressed group who occupies a position of lesser power. They are referred to in the singular because they do not have a privileged group and systems of power working in their favor like the “we” of the speaker.
The intended audience—“you”—can come from one of many different oppressed groups; however, visible difference is what first forms the basis of discrimination perpetuated by the systemic “we.” Mullen’s replacement of lost and stolen luggage with “relatives” in Line 1 is connected to the “handlers” who lose the audience’s “luggage” (Line 11). Generational trauma experienced by Black Americans is having “relatives” (Line 1), often not-too-distant, whose lives were lost in the slave trade, and having relatives who were stolen as if they were merely possessions. This is not the result of a singular human being experiencing a hate crime, but an entire group of people being harmed by the institution of slavery, or a system of racism. Blaming the “handlers” in Line 11 is blaming overseers—the people who physically harmed slaves on plantations, rather than the slave owners and the entire system of owning slaves.
However, the system—the collectivized “we” of people and laws—can choose to disempower and dehumanize the audience through the denial of human rights. The “you” expands to include not explicitly just Black people, but also “anyone” (Line 4) the system considers a threat. Being a threat is partially defined as speaking or acting out against injustice: civil disobedience. In Line 2, the “we” declares they cannot “guarantee your safety if you disobey our instructions” (Line 2). Being a threat is also defined as being an “other,” which is another theme of the poem.
Process of Othering
Illuminating the process of othering is a central theme of “We Are Not Responsible.” The concept of “the other” has been discussed by a variety of philosophers and psychoanalysts, including Simone de Beauvoir, Jaques Lacan, and Michel Foucault. They reframe Hegel’s discussion of the self as the opposite of the constitutive other to look at power relationships between the self and the other. Power is unequally divided between the self and the other, a dichotomy that can be referred to as—the known and unknown; the in-group and out-group; or the majority and the minority. The latter of each of these pairings (other, unknown, out-group, minority) is disempowered by the former.
Mullen examines how the powerful speaker (“we”) others the audience (“you”) of the poem. It turns out anyone can be othered: “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone” (Line 4). However, the process of othering often centers on racial differences. As previously mentioned, Black Americans are othered because of the institution of slavery. Another group that the speaker of the poem others is Indigenous people of the Americas. The speaker says the systemic “we” will “not guarantee that we will honor your reservations” (Line 5). Reservation has multiple meanings. In addition to meaning a reservation guaranteeing a seat on an airplane, Mullen invokes the allotments of land given to Indigenous people in the United States.
Profiling is a fairly standardized practice of othering. In a post-9/11 world, people who “fit the profile” (Line 13) in American airports are people who look Middle Eastern. People from the Middle East are also identified by their use of language. Mullen’s speaker insists, “[i]f you cannot understand English, you will be moved out of the way” (Line 8). This includes, but is not limited to, people from the Middle East; anyone whose first language is not English is othered by systemic racism.
Growth of the Police State
In “We Are Not Responsible,” Mullen examines one of the systems that perpetuates racism—American law enforcement. America’s “peculiar institution” of chattel slavery began a systemic process of dehumanizing people simply because of their skin color. This systemic racism transferred to law enforcement after Black people won their freedom and the right to vote during the post-American Civil War period known as Reconstruction.
Mullen specifically focuses on the “police” (Line 14) in the last two stanzas of the lineated version of the poem, or the second half of the prose poem. One of the most famous lines of “We Are Not Responsible” is “[i]t’s not our fault you were born wearing a gang color” (Line 16). Police in America claim to be cracking down on a specific kind of gang violence, between factions who wear different colored clothes and accessories, but use this as an excuse to enact violence against young Black men. “[G]ang color” (Line 16) here refers to skin color—not actual membership in a gang.
Mullen includes another reference to how young black men in America have been killed by the police because they look suspicious: “You are not presumed to be innocent if the police / have reason to suspect you are carrying a concealed wallet” (Lines 14-15). The familiar language of “concealed weapon” replaced with “concealed wallet” shows how the familiar language itself is arbitrary. The police use a (nonexistent) hidden gun as an excuse to profile based on race; the language is a part of systemic racism’s denial of responsibility.
Unlock all 18 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Harryette Mullen
