I did my found poem of the song “Black or White” by Michael Jackson. I listened to the song over and over again while I wrote a list of words and phrases that I wanted to put into the poem. After I came up with the list, I put the words and phrases on the paper and moved them around until I was satisfied with how it looked. I did this song for this poem because it talks about how it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white, as racism is still a problem today. The song lyrics that stood out to me that Jackson said was “I had to tell them I ain’t second to none” and “… I told them about equality and it’s true, you’re either wrong or right”. These lyrics show that everyone has their own opinion on what equality is and if someone has a different opinion on equality, they are right. This song shows that people are tired of racism and that it needs to end. Jackson says in this song “I’m not going to spend my life being a color”, in other words, racism needs to end and it needs to end now. This song made me feel sad and also angry because racism is still such a big issue still today. After listening to this song several times in a row, I picked out more information that I didn’t necessarily see before like when Jackson says “it’s not about races, just places, faces”. Overall, I think that I got more out of the song after listening to it several times and it made me think about racism in a somewhat different way.
Hi Greta! I really liked your poem. I thought that it was very moving. I thought your method for choosing which words you wanted was cool, with listening to the song more than once to get a good grasp on It before putting the words on the page. I agree that these lyrics make a very clear statement about how racism needs to be ended. I think that this poem is very relatable to today because racism is still a very prominent issue in our society.