If You Hear the Dogs, Keep Going

Lately, I’ve been thinking about Rudyard Kipling’s 1910 poem, “If—,”.

“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,..” 

Grounded in themes of self-control, perseverance, and resilience, the ode reminds us that if we can hold it together, when all seems lost, we can not only survive but thrive. But before you get too lost in the moment, Kipling is also the same guy who gave us the poem “The White Man’s Burden“.

Published in 1899, Rudyard wrote about the need for the United States and European powers to expand and govern overseas colonies. He used the phrase “white man’s burden” to embody a racist and paternalistic idea to “civilize,” govern, and control nonwhite people around the world.

Both works cloud my reality, as I reckon with the advancement of legislation and policies designed to strip Black voters of representation and those aligned with the Democratic Party of political power. I wish my angst were confined to the recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have nullified some of the last vestiges of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Yet, the partisan and racist race to carve up Black and democratic voting districts is just one source of discontent.

Some of the very same states leading the charge to weaken voting rights and diminish Black political engagement are also advancing legislation that criminalizes poverty and homelessness. There is a pattern here and it is difficult to ignore. Historically, when access to political power is restricted, systems of economic and social control often expand in conjunction with it.

In states like Louisiana, lawmakers are proposing policies that would jail unhoused individuals, impose fines they cannot afford, and potentially funnel them into systems of forced labor through felony convictions. The parallels to the post-Reconstruction South are striking. After slavery formally ended, Southern states used vagrancy laws, anti-loitering statutes, and selective enforcement to criminalize Black unemployment, homelessness, and poverty. Once convicted, thousands were forced into unpaid labor through convict leasing systems made legal under the 13th Amendment’s exception allowing involuntary servitude “as punishment for crime.” 

Louisiana’s efforts come on the heels of a 2024 Supreme Court decision that allows states and cities to criminalize homelessness. I’m not big on conspiracies, but there is definitely something going on here. This cycle, of continued work to weaken democratic participation, underinvest in housing, healthcare, education, criminalize poverty, and expand incarceration, sounds like an orchestrated pathway backwards.

As I pen this article, news of Tennessee’s successful passage of a bill to gain full Republican control of their congressional seats has just passed. While Kipling’s words “keep your head about you” seem appropriate, it is Harriet Tubman’s words that mean the most “If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If there’s shouting after you, keep going. Don’t ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going.”