We Are Not Responsible

Mullen’s poem “We Are Not Responsible” is a parody of the warnings issued during air travel. It was published (in her book, Sleeping with the Dictionary) as a prose poem in one paragraph. Other reprintings (such as on the Poetry Foundation website shared in this guide) break the piece into 21 lines and five stanzas. The act of parody is changing key words and phrases in the familiar airline announcements, so they represent systemic racism and demonstrate how people are othered, or made to be lesser than the privileged majority.

The first four sentences of the prose poem, contained in the first stanza of the lineated version, begin with the first-person plural “[w]e” (Lines 1-4). This repetition forms the identity of the speaker: a character of authority, or a system that is more powerful than the individual. Mullen follows the first three instances of “we” with repeated negations, variations of the word “not”: “are not” (Line 1), “cannot” (Line 2), and “do not” (Line 3). This repetition immediately establishes the theme of what authority, or a system, refuses to do.

The audience of this negated action, the “you” of the poem, is identified in the first replacement Mullen makes. Rather than the airport announcement saying it is not responsible for your lost or stolen items, Mullen replaces items with “relatives” (Line 1). Transforming people into possessions is a reference to the institution of chattel slavery. The poem is first directed at the relatives of slaves, or Black people in America.

Next, the “you” of the poem opens to include more people. The addressee expands to include people who do not abide by the rules set forth by authority figures and “people begging for handouts” (Line 3). In the fourth line of the first stanza, or fourth sentence of the prose, the “we” makes its first assertion—it can and will “refuse service to anyone” (Line 4). This is part of the process of being othered, wherein a person is set apart as lesser because a system, or powerful group of people, asserts that they are. The people who are refused are othered.

In the next three prose sentences or the second stanza, Mullen moves from the negations and assertions of the speaker to how it places responsibility on the actions of the underprivileged audience (“we” versus “you”). The airline “ticket” in Line 5 represents any kind of documentation that may or may not be recognized by the authorities; presumably, this is a nod at documentation for workers, green cards, or other forms of citizenship documentation.

The command sentence structure of Lines 6 and 7 takes out both the “we” and “you.” Mullen replaces the familiar airline announcement about limiting carry-on luggage with the speaker telling the audience to cease their “carrying on” (Line 6). While authority can choose how it reacts to people who emotionally respond to being unfairly treated, placing blame on the action of being emotional absolves the speaker of responsibility. In Line 7, by the act of parodical replacement, Mullen continues developing a comparison between the banned act of smoking on airplanes with “smoldering resentments” (Line 7), or long-term emotional pain the audience is forced to repress.

Ironically, the command sentence structure used in English—demonstrated in Lines 6 and 7—is similar to other languages that do not use pronouns, and is seen in English translations of non-English works (such as Chinese poetry). In Line 8, Mullen makes a statement about needing to know the English language to make use of the social services to which each inhabitant, citizen or otherwise, is entitled.

Stanza three (or the eighth, ninth, and tenth sentences in the prose version) offers causal statements that place responsibility on the actions of the less powerful individual rather than on the powerful system. In addition to being dismissed for not knowing English, the “loss” of Line 1—relatives who died because of slavery—is repeated. The people who suffer this loss have to “look out for” (Line 9) themselves, rather than receive any reparations or aid from the governing body. The authorities refuse to act because the claims are so “frightful” (Line 11): This aligns different groups of people who have been othered by the powerful majority.

Mullen brings back a word she previously replaced at the end of stanza three, or in the eleventh sentence of the prose version—“luggage” (Line 11). This word could have appeared in Line 1 (instead of “relatives”) or in Line 6 (completing the phrase “carry-on luggage”). In Line 11, the speaker blames their “handlers” for losing luggage. However, Mullen makes the lost luggage “key” (Line 12), or key to a passenger’s suitcase, into the key to a “legal case” (Line 12). This is a reference to the key to a case being that a powerful system, rather than an oppressed individual, has to take responsibility for inequity.

In the fourth stanza, or sentences 12 through 15 in the prose version, Mullen focuses on the police presence. Airport security dramatically changed after the 9/11 attacks, and Mullen references this in the “profile” (Line 13) that police use to single out passengers for “interrogation” (Line 13). Along with Black people and people who do not speak English, the racial profiling used by American police includes people from the Middle East. These people are othered alongside people who are profiled as “gang” (Line 16) members because of their skin color.

The corruption of the police state is pointed out in how the speaker waives their rights. If a person fits the “profile” (Line 13), the police do not “presume” that they are “innocent” (Line 14) until proven guilty. Also, the police do not feel obligated to inform the audience who fits the profile “of your rights” (Line 17). This connects being othered and being denied basic rights.

In the fifth stanza, or final three sentences in the prose version, Mullen re-emphasizes her points about stripping people of their rights, and using emotional displays as a reason for shifting blame. The speaker not only feels no obligation to inform the audience of their rights—as in Line 17—but also does not feel “bound to respect” any “rights” of the oppressed “you” in Line 19. If the “you”—someone who fits the profile (being Black, Muslim, a non-native English speaker, or anyone the speaker chooses)—responds with a “bad attitude” (Line 18) or does not “remain calm” (Line 20), the speaker will use the emotional response as justification for their actions. Systemic racism allows the powerful speaker to deny responsibility.