Welcome to this week's Poetically Yours. Poetically Yours showcases poems by northern Illinois poets. This week's episode features Christopher D. Sims.
Sims is from the West Side of Rockford and first shared his poetic gifts onstage at Haskell Elementary School, thanks to Dorothy Paige-Turner.
Rooted in Black joy and celebration, his poems wind through the landscapes of this country's past and present. He hopes they will inform, engage, and entertain. Sims, who originally wrote rap and hip-hop lyrics, said his poetry has a bebop cadence. In today’s episode, Sims talks about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Here’s his poem “Why DEI.”
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is a set of practices and principles that aim to ensure fair treatment and equal opportunities for all people. DEI is used in organizations to promote a welcoming and respectful environment.
Why diversity, equity, inclusion?
Why doubt it, destroy it, toy with
the people who need it? Why
DEI?
Why treat it like an enemy?
Why continuously treat it
as if it is poison? It is education,
equity, respectfully creating
balance in places of employment.
It could be enjoyment
In offices where culture
Is celebrated, elevated,
equated with respect,
honor, dignity.
People of color, especially,
benefit from the practice
Of being acknowledged
on the job. We are
being robbed of opportunities
to feel like we belong, to feel like
we matter.
So, why DEI?
We try to defy what this
country needs? Isn’t
the United States a place
where in diversity we must
believe? We should believe.
Why for Black people
and for other people of color
living in the US must be a
continuous fight? How about
simply doing what is right?
Erasure is what anti-DEI people
are trying to create. This is another
form of hate, of control, of violence,
of evidence of practices which don’t
make any sense.
Convinced are leaders who would
rather see people suffer than excel.
Why DEI?
Why end initiatives of purpose?
Why end a much-needed service
for the masses who need it?
POTUS is telling leaders to
do not acknowledge or practice
DEI, he wants DEI to die, he
does not believe in diversity,
equity, or inclusion, so the
idea of we are all created equal
is an illusion in this country of
ours.
What about Civil Rights, what
about the exhausting work of
the Reverend, Dr. Martin Luther King?
Will his efforts, his leadership,
his fights for the disenfranchised
ever be redeemed? We are at
the extremes of wicked political
policies hurting marginalized
people.
If she could, the Statue
of Liberty would cry, because
looming is the death of DEI.
Why?
© Christopher D. Sims
01/30/2025
