Race

In “Race,” Elizabeth Alexander interrogates the stories people tell about race. In the first stanza, the first-person speaker reveals the hard facts of some family history—namely, that Great-Uncle Paul and family members of that generation left the South to transform themselves. Alexander sets up a contrast between what these inventions are by relying on visual imagery and repetition in the first stanza. Paul and his siblings are “pale skinned, / as straight-haired, as blue-eyed” (Lines 5-6) as each other, but their appearances signify different things because of their choices. Alexander uses the words “black” and “white” four times each in this stanza to set up the contrast between Paul’s choice to pass as white as a “forester in Oregon” (Line 2) and his siblings’ choice to maintain Black identities with the move to New York. The respective spouses—Paul’s “white wife” (Line 4) and the “Brown-skinned spouses” (Line 11)—declare where the siblings stand on the issue of racial identity. Where Paul is “fundamentally white” (Line 3), the siblings are emphatically “black!” (Line 11), a point Alexander makes by using the exclamation point.

Near the end of the first stanza, Alexander introduces a line the speaker repeats later—“Many others have told, and not told this tale” (Line 12). In the first instance of this line, the “I” from the beginning of the stanza becomes “Many” by the end of the stanza. That substitution connects the speaker’s recollection to a larger history. The “Many” may well be many family members who share a family story about how Paul was welcomed back into the family fold despite his passing. Family bonds are able to overcome conflicts over race. “Many” may also refer to a larger history of Black America, where the choice to pass as white or maintain a Black identity despite racial prejudice assumes explicitly political overtones. That uncertainty over just who or what “Many” reflects that when the speaker tells a story about Uncle Paul, they are creating a narrative that is of political and personal consequence to how the speaker conceives of race.

In the second stanza, Alexander recasts the speaker, this time as the more generic voice of “[t]he poet” (Line 14) reflecting on the equally generic terms “pale black ancestor” (14) and “the race” (Line 15). Alexander’s repetition of “imagines” (Lines 15, 17, and 18) and her use of the synonym “invents” (Line 14) invite the reader to focus on how or if poetry can transform Paul into a hero. The language in this stanza calls attention to the art of creating such a narrative. Rather than the stark white and black of the first stanza, we get shades like “ivory,” “sagey” (Line 16), and “graphite” (Line 20). In place of the personal family narrative about Paul and the siblings, there is a more lyrical representation of what it must be like to be Paul’s wife. The word “caesura” (Line 19) also calls attention to this stanza as an artistic rendering of a more personal story.

The third stanza returns to anecdote to show what actually happens between Great-Uncle Paul and his siblings. There is a rupture in the family when Paul tries to force his siblings to participate in his passing by excluding their Black spouses from a family gathering. Alexander echoes the word “ivory” (Lines 18, 25) from the second stanza, only this time it is “ivory siblings” (Line 24) instead of the “ivory spouse” (Line 18) whose perspective we get. Where Paul’s wife sees but doesn’t understand Paul, Paul’s siblings refuse “to see their brother”(Line 25) because they understand what he is asking, which is that they disavow the families they have created with their Black spouses. Alexander’s use of “ivory” (Lines 18, 25) to describe Paul’s wife and the siblings helps the reader see the irony of race, which is that people who are to all appearances indistinguishable are not of the same race; Paul is rejecting this newly expanded family, but then, so are Paul’s siblings. Rather than conclude with a statement about who is wrong in the conflict, the speaker offers that both race and family are “strange” (Line 26). Poets like the speaker keep coming back to it because it defies understanding, just as family does. The last line of the poem encourages the reader to accept the ambiguous nature of race, family, and poetry itself.