To Our Black Students, with Love, is a series of letters from the SLCC student body to our Black students. The Office of Diversity & Multicultural Affairs started this letter campaign to show solidarity with our students in response to the Zoom bombing that occurred during the Black History Month Poetry Slam hosted by the Black Student Union in February 2021. Read more letters here.
Love Letter to Black Poets,
Never forget that you stand on the shoulder of—not giants—Titans. You built this. You are the center that held. Never forget that your bloodline connects the world more tightly than our borders. You are continents and Islands. You are rivers. Oceans. You are the Americas Black Native, Afro Latinx, Puerto Rican. You are the Caribbean. Never forget you are beautiful. Your beauty is sacred. Your beauty is powerful. Never forget that we do not deserve you. Not we sing oppression. Not when we break everything. Never forget that our racism is not yours to carry. We need to do better. We need to be better.
An earlier version of this post inadvertently combined multiple letters into one message. We apologize for the error.