Incident

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1925

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

The Power of Art

“Incident” is a poem about a childhood memory and the speaker’s effort to make sense of one specific memory among many. On its face, the poem is about a child’s discovery of the everyday, ordinary nature of racism. Cullen makes several rhetorical choices to force the reader to see such events as important rather than trivial.

First of all, Cullen chooses ballad as his form (see: Literary Devices), a form that memorializes either important events or that uses narrative to capture some universal theme. That choice of form signals to the reader that remembering this child’s pain is important enough to write it into the Anglo American literary tradition.

A second significant rhetorical choice Cullen makes is to have the speaker describe this event through retrospection, a form of narrative in which a present-day “I” tells a story about the past “I” to shore up the identity or needs of the present-day “I.” Having an adult speaker recount this encounter makes it clear that even after all these years, the speaker still bears trauma from this encounter, so much so that they’ve lost nearly a year of their childhood.

Cullen was a poet committed to using his art for self-expression but also to bridge the racial divide between Black and white people. By sharing this common but sad experience of Black childhood with white readers, he relies on art to encourage such readers to see racism as real and to feel empathy for its survivors. For Black readers, the poem is a reminder of the same kinds of incidents that they, too, might have tucked away.

The Nature of Racism

Cullen subtly points to the different forms of racism Black people encounter in their day-to-day lives. The encounter between the speaker and the boy who calls the speaker a racial slur is an example of interpersonal racism, racism that occurs in the context of individual encounters. The racism the speaker encountered as a child was psychologically wounding in the immediate aftermath (the seven months in Baltimore) and over time, since the speaker is still grappling with the event in the present moment of the poem.

The second form of racism, systemic racism, is more subtly present in the poem. Systemic racism is built into society through systems like banking institutions and the legal system. The child is “riding in old Baltimore” (Line 1). That description may be a generic reference to the city, but it may also reference Baltimore in “the early 20th century, [when] the city developed and vigorously enforced discriminatory practices. In 1911, the city council passed the first housing segregation ordinance in the country directed at black people” (Foster, Lionel, et al. “‘The Black Butterfly’: Racial Segregation and Investment Patterns in Baltimore.” Urban Institute, 2019). Although it isn’t clear when exactly this event occurs or what the boy is riding, it is clear that this event likely happens during this period. The city that the speaker rides through with such wonder is one that produces little boys who use racial slurs and Black children who quickly lose their wonder as they come up against the limitations of being Black in such a city.

The Nature of Childhood

Although it is commonplace to represent childhood as a time of innocence, Cullen represents childhood in less idealistic terms. Cullen’s choice to represent childhood in this way runs counter to the representation of childhood in the Romantic poets who so influenced his writing. His representation of childhood shows the influence of the Harlem Renaissance on his poetry.

The children in this poem are either traumatized or cruel. In the poem, the speaker is only eight when the reality of racial hatred drastically changes the speaker’s self-image. The encounter with the rude boy crushes the speaker’s capacity to remember and experience joy as they recall Baltimore. For Black children, the malign influence of racism strips children of their sense of wonder and their openness to others in social interactions. The speaker experiences a loss of racial innocence and understands their Blackness through the lens of white supremacy.

The other child in the poem is the boy with his jutting tongue and racial slur. His cruelty to the speaker is casual and seemingly not motivated by anything specific about the speaker other than the speaker’s demeanor and race. As an eight-year-old, he confidently expresses his disgust and prejudice in a public setting. He has already learned the central lesson of white supremacy, which is that he is purportedly better than Black people and has the right in public spaces to put Black people in their place should they forget that. The encounter in “Incident” shows that racism is such a perverse force that it damages and corrupts children at a young age.