Justin T. (J.T.) Hill is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), within the (UTD) Literature program. He holds a B.A. in Leadership Studies from Regent University, an M.L.S. (Human Rights & Social Justice, Global Studies) from Southern Methodist University (SMU), Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies (CAGS) from Southern Methodist University, M.A. in Literature from the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), and is a distinguished U.S. Army veteran (E-5). Hill teaches courses and conducts research in Freirean thought, Global South history, [B]lack radical politics, Cold War–era decolonial poetics, and critical literacy. Hill has presented at numerous conferences on topics ranging from Frantz Fanon and “Liberating Violence” to Fred Hampton and his socio-political connection to critical literacy. Hill’s scholarship and pedagogical approach earned him the 2020 Association of Graduate Liberal Studies – Student Presentation Award Winner; 2021 Dr. Roger N. and Adrienne T. Rosenberg Graduate Fellowship Award; and the 2022 Nomination for the UTD President’s Teaching Excellence Award; among others. Importantly, Hill is proud to hold five U.S. Army Commendation Medals (ARCOM) and five U.S. Army Achievement Medals (AAM), inter alia—within less than six years of dedicated service. It is Hill’s primary goal to conflate both theory and praxis in hopes of raising the banner of global literacy and justice for the national and international peripheralized.
poetry
I Wonder if White Folks Know
J. T. Hill, University of Texas at Dallas
Do white folks know:
That you can have gold fronts and be an intellectual?
That it’s possible to play spades, sing a hymn, and quote Gramsci
like a backwoods reverend?
Do white folks know?
That it’s possible for “the nigras” to love and read literature
and turn pages with a tattooed hand?
That we can listen to Johnny “Guitar” Watson & ’Retha Franklin
and teach white students a basic college course that won’t be bland?
I wonder if white folks know
That just because they see a “nigra” veteran
it doesn’t mean that he or she is “one of the good ones.”
Rather, unfortunately, it means that they can detect illiteracy
Meaning: all it takes is for three cornbread-fed Stonewall Jacksons to get rid of thee.
Do white folks know?
That we laugh at them when they say: “Make America Great Again”
HA! Because after—or perhaps if—they win the upcoming election
they’ll be using coupons to secure another can of Raid, AGAIN,
for them same goddamn roaches.
Lord have mercy, I wonder if white folks know
That they votin’ for another base in peripheral Africa,
or maybe for the construction of another drone.
At the least, I know for a fact that that patriotic vote
won’t give them the tiniest-piece-of-meat off their own-fetched-bone.
Do white folks know?
That the “nigra” can’t just “up-and-go back to Africa”
because the metonymical “white” man lives there too?
His first name is colonial—but my kinfolk call him [N]eo.
You can tell that the white folks who state that are definitely Leo’s—in the third house.
I wonder if white folks know
About their problem with the forthcoming eviction—and that same mouse.
In Black homes, we call ’em Ben—on special occasion, we call ’em “Tom.”
Perhaps white folks call ’em Jerry?
Regardless, after they vote in the primaries—at the library:
that same mouse gon’ be in that same house;
waitin’ for the crumbs off that nationalistic pie that’s cherry.
Do white folks know?
Comrades, whether they know or not is not the issue.
For what we are dealing with is the metastasization of illiteracy
which will cause them to act belligerently—over a demagogue,
who blows whistles at human-beings—whom he or she views as less than dogs.
And since there’s a chance that these white folks won’t know,
let me leave here and lock my damn do’.
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