Pat Parker warns us that cowardly acquiescence to fascism is deadly for us all.
Although Pat Parker’s poem “Where Will You Be?” was first published in 1978, it offers a startling assessment of the dangers of our political present—and a damning indictment of our responses to that danger. “Where Will You Be?” is arguably about fascism: about the forms of fascism’s appearances, but also about the sexual and gender identities of its first victims. As a Black lesbian, Parker recognized that those cast as sexually deviant, those, as she writes, “defined as opposite –perverse,” will be among the first culled during fascism’s purges; that a primal threat to fascism’s norms occurs through sexuality, through “the queerness,/the faggotry,/the perverseness” that is cast as an “evil” influence undermining so-called civilized society.
For Parker, however, the real perversion is silence. It is the cowardly acquiescence to power in the interests of survival and self-preservation. Yet, as Parker suggests through the short, sharp lines of “Where Will You Be?,” silence will not allow you to hide forever, and acquiescence to power will still get you killed.
“Where Will You Be?” carries an urgently moral message of resistance through solidarity that speaks to the present. For at a moment when they are coming for all of us – Black folks and trans people, Brown folk and queer – we need to quickly decide where we will be. “And they will come.”
Pat Parker’s “Where Will You Be?” is reprinted below.
Where Will You Be?
Pat Parker
Boots are being polished
Trumpeters clean their horns
Chains and locks forged
The crusade has begun.
Once again flags of Christ
are unfurled in the dawn
and cries of soul saviors
sing apocalyptic on air waves.
Citizens, good citizens all
parade into voting booths
and in self-righteous sanctity
X away our right to life.
I do not believe as some
that the vote is an end,
I fear even more
It is just a beginning.
So I must make assessment
Look to you and ask:
Where will you be when they come?
They will not come
a mob rolling
through the streets,
but quickly and quietly
move into our homes
and remove the evil,
the queerness,
the faggotry,
the perverseness
from their midst.
They will not come
clothed in brown,
and swastikas, or
bearing chest heavy with
gleaming crosses.
The time and need
for ruses are over.
They will come
in business suits
to buy your homes
and bring bodies to
fill your jobs.
They will come in robes
to rehabilitate
and white coats
to subjugate
and where will you be
when they come?
Where will we all be
when they come?
And they will come –
they will come
because we are
defined as opposite –
perverse
and we are perverse.
Every time we watched
a queer hassled in the
streets and said nothing –
It was an act of perversion.
Everytime we lied about
the boyfriend or girlfriend
at coffee break –
It was an act of perversion.
Everytime we heard,
"I don't mind gays
but why must they
be blatant?" and said nothing –
It was an act of perversion.
Everytime we let a lesbian mother
lose her child and did not fill
the courtroom –
It was an act of perversion.
Everytime we let straights
make out in our bars while
we couldn't touch because
of laws –
It was an act of perversion.
Everytime we put on the proper
clothes to go to a family
wedding and left our lovers
at home –
It was an act of perversion.
Everytime we heard
"Who I go to bed with
is my personal choice –
It's personal not political"
and said nothing –
It was an act of perversion.
Everytime we let straight relatives
bury our dead and push our
lovers away –
It was an act of perversion.
And they will come.
They will come for
the perverts
& it won't matter
if you're
homosexual, not a faggot
lesbian, not a dyke
gay, not queer
It won't matter
if you
own your business
have a good job
or are on S.S.I.
It won't matter
if you're
Black
Chicano
Native American
Asian
or White
It won't matter
if you're from
New York
or Los Angeles
Galveston
or Sioux Falls
It won't matter
if you're
Butch, or Fem
Not into roles
Monogamous
Non Monogamous
It won't matter
if you're
Catholic
Baptist
Atheist
Jewish
or M.C.C.
They will come
They will come
to the cities
and to the land
to your front rooms
and in your closets.
They will come for
the perverts
and where will
you be
When they come?
Pat Parker’s “Where Will You Be?” was first published in Movement in Black: The Collected poetry of Pat Parker, 1961-1978 (Diana Press, 1978). It was reprinted in Conditions: Five, The Black Women’s Issue (2 no. 2, Autumn 1979), co-edited by Lorraine Bethel and Barbara Smith and in Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (1983), edited by Barbara Smith.
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