Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Dawn Butler’s bonkers black history poem

Dawn Butler

Oh. My. Lord. I’ve been looking at Dawn Butler’s spoken verse as presented by her on X and it’s difficult to know what to say. It is, it seems, Dawn’s contribution to Black History Month. 

The lyrics are at the bottom of the page, though for the full effect you really need to hear her delivery, with the accompanying shots, made up mostly of fetching images of Dawn, but with some material illustrative of her point, if I’ve discerned it correctly:

What she seems to be doing is addressing a racist troll, though it might be helpful if she made that clearer at the outset, because at present her unseen interlocutor would seem to be any random white person. And to put the most positive construction on her train of thought, if that’s the right word, she is rejecting the contention that a black person such as she is in any way inferior to her unknown antagonist.

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