A Year After the Strike

A year after the strike, 

You say, “It makes me really sad that there was a strike.”

It makes me really sad that You White People didn’t learn from it.

 

You with your Doc Martens

and your Bisexual Bobs

and your Bryn Mawr College Athletics “Black Lives Matter” masks.

 

You with your dyed hair

and your private high schools

and your queerness.

 

You with your fashion

and your alcohol

and your weed

and your whiteness.

 

You with your Instagram infographics

and your white feminism

and your conservative families back home that make you feel so, so terrible.

 

A year after the strike, 

You say, “I’m glad that we learned from the strike.”

Who is “we”?

 

I did not need a strike to illuminate racism at this school. 

I was here a month

and I felt it in the air. 

I heard it in my classes on Zoom,

I saw it in my THRIVE,

I heard it in the way you all talk.

 

I saw it in who becomes friends with who.

Hey White Bryn Mawr Students, 

why are all of your friends white too?

 

When you walk this campus, 

do You think about the people that can’t?

 

When you laugh with your friends, 

do You think about the people who get stared at for doing the same?

 

When you smoke Your weed, like I know so many of You do, 

do You think about the people whose families have been torn apart for the same crime?

 

Do You think about it 

when you buy your four-dollar-and-fifty-cents mocha from Uncommon,

Do you think about the people who work their asses off 

to scrape by at this school?

 

When you breathe

and cry

and skip class

and dance

and party

and,

and,

and,

do You think about who isn’t allowed to? 

 

Because I do.

Some of us live the truths that you talk about as theoretical anecdotes in your 

Political Science

Economics

Sociology

Philosophy

Insert-Minority-Studies

classes.

 

White Bryn Mawr students come to this school 

and fuck their girlfriends 

and say they’re oppressed 

because somewhere, 

someone else is getting murdered for the same act. 

​

White Bryn Mawr students come to this school 

because it is a Historically Women's College 

and they will be safe from men, 

evil, evil men, 

because they have been oppressed by them their whole lives.

 

White Bryn Mawr students, you come here because it’s an HWC,

 but you also come here because it’s a PWI. 

 

Bryn Mawr lets you be safe and secure

 in your transgressive genders and sexualities,

because it uplifts you for your whiteness, 

and that’s why you’re safe here. 

 

Hey White Bryn Mawr students, 

just because you know one form of oppression doesn’t mean you know them all. 

Hey White Bryn Mawr students, 

I know you’ve heard of intersectionality,

 so where the fuck is your application?

 

Hey White Bryn Mawr students, 

you can talk about the strike as much as you want, 

but I don’t think you hear yourselves sometimes. 

 

You are so so sad that anti-Blackness is ingrained in this institution, 

but your sorrow has a limit. 

 

You say you learned, then where is your fire? 

Where is your radical action? 

​

White Bryn Mawr students,

 congratulations 

for epitomizing white tears 

and 

performative activism 

and

fucking bullshit. 

 

A year ago, I had a little faith in you.

 Today I have next to none. 

 

Hey White Bryn Mawr students, 

do better. 

You’re running out of time to prove your words.