Our Legacy Needs To Be Better: Notorious White Responses after Ed Mabrey's Poem “The Libretto of the Opera: Death of a Black Boy”

In this short essay, I analyze a poem and performance that I wrote as a part of the Opening Session for the 2017 National Communication Association annual convention. In the poem, which is a response to and inspired by Ed Mabrey's “The Libretto of the Opera: Death of a Black Boy,” I take us through a day on social media and the news cycle after a Black boy has been murdered by police officers. The poem illuminates dangerous social media responses centered in whiteness post-Black death in the United States. In the essay, I explicate my process for writing this performance—centering the need for reflexivity instead of white guilt so that white people can do clearly antiracist work. I end by focusing on academia's potential for leaving a stronger and more positive legacy.