Fire and light

This short poem discusses an important and lived feminist reality that is is not often discussed: the racial tensions of being part of global movements and the international development space. Its author Swatee Deepak says that it expresses “the tensions, emotions, and fire that is catalyzed by those realities that recall our ancestors.”

Fire and light, a poem by Swatee Deepak

White women like you just take.
You take the love,
The support
And
You benefit from
The approach
Of women of colour
Like me.
Who push through their own trauma to centre everyone,
All the while
Taking up space for yourself.

It’s just proven to me,
That the fragility of white women
Means women of colour,
Always
Have to give up their space and power
For white women like you.

It’s reinforced to me
How your trauma and experience
Is so willfully self centered
In the midst of my insistence on centering others.

Such entitlement.
For opportunities,
For travel
Understanding
And respect.

All the while
Visiting the site of
Poverty
Trauma
Of people of colour.
And only concentrating
On your own pain.

You can’t accept my power
Their power
My authority
Their authority
And our grace.
You,
Feel threatened.

But the power of my ancestors,
And my fellow brothers and sisters,
Have fought
And continue to fight
For a future.
With grace,
Love
Fire
And light.

I carry their hopes for a future
With That same
Resilience
Brilliance
And light.

There is no way
You can extinguish our power
Or erase
The light
And fight
Of my ancestors.
Or me.

Swatee Deepak is a social justice and philanthropy consultant. She has significant experience in supporting movements, starting and leading organisations through growth and transitions across philanthropy, investments, grassroots organisations, development agencies, socially minded businesses and the arts.

***

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