There's a reason that racist poems are often bad on the level of craft. It's because, as M. NourbeSe Philip says, English—a colonial language—requires decontamination. That is a rigorous thing, a thing of ongoing deep vigilance, an understanding of how language is (un)made.

I'm saying this b/c I've heard people saying "it's also just a bad poem" and others saying "it doesn't matter if it were a good poem, it's racist," and it seems like something is missed in that encounter.

Dionne Brand talks about a primary project of her writing life as "producing the grammar in which Black existence is the thought, not the unthought." To constitute a grammar from the material produced in order to foreclose that grammar?!

That is what Lorde talked about when she said: “Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.” To make the unthinkable thinkable, to coax or wrest that new thing from language so new forms of relation can come into being?! That is work, craft.

To make English do racism? That is just the status quo.