I Want to Make Your Life Hard

If I told you where I am from would you believe me?

You say you are colorblind and yet you strive to make a rainbow

Keep your, my privilege up in the clouds

Pour your pity down like rain

The holy cleansing water of your God

Or is He mine too?

I no longer know

If I ever did

Race is an illusion is it not?

Is separation of church and state merely an illusion too?

Race is an essence, surely

If I choose to identify myself in such terms

As though it’s a choice

As though I get one

As though you would listen instead of look

Identity is static after all

Fixed, attributed

People do not change

Illusion or essence?

Neither or both?

Opposites are supposed to be simple

I learned this

I thought I knew this

What a violent thing to teach a child

You pointed it out

They pointed with their fingers

Look!

See?

So I pointed too

I can interpret all by myself now

What is real is what is bounded

In thinking not feeling

Science not stories

Stories are bodies of work but they do not contain

A drop of blood

The double helix of DNA

You can read them aloud of course

But take care not too express an intensity of emotion

You wouldn’t want to sound angry now would you?

They can be written, such is the enlightened way

Is that why print is in black and white?

Because you, we can’t see in color(s)?

Does the “holy” water cleanse or does fire?

“this sacred holy purifying spirit of anger”[1]

Both are entirely capable of destruction and life

But didn’t you know that it is far better

To destroy calmly?

To live through destruction calmly?

Cool like the water

It is too stifling when it is hot

Uncomfortable

But warmth is not enough

It is all or nothing

“Stretch or die”[2]

You suffocate

When you can’t form words through the smoke

You have to take action

To get angry

But we can’t have that

It is unacceptable

Don’t you have any common sense?

Purify or pollute

How dare you dilute your blood?

It makes it that much harder to classify

To identify

To differentiate

Why would you confuse your identity so?

We can’t give you one now

Black

White

Red

Yellow

Did we forget one?

Brown?

There are too many hues within that one

The least of which being the shades of truth

That these people

The People exist

Here, there, the elsewhere

Everywhere

You asked me what I would be learning

And I replied Ethnic Studies among other things

You scoffed

Why?

Why?

So I can learn things that I never knew that I should know

So I can understand why things are the way they are

Social constructs

Deconstructed

Created by, for, at the expense of whom

A sense of Duty

Justice

Because I want to

Because I care

So I can understand why

Or at least try

So I can see with eyes unclouded by white hegemony I said

You actually laughed now

Well good luck!

Look at you

You are white

So you will always see from a white perspective

You then said that you liked being a white man

With a satisfied shrug

But…

Not when all of your (and my) privilege comes at the cost, to the detriment of others?

You must know that

You could not be so blind

Not when the opportunities of the so-called enlightenment of higher education are before you

You laughed and shrugged again

Not a care in the world

It seems that is all you ever do

Brush things aside

Under the rug

But no wait,

That would mean that they existed now wouldn’t it?

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[1] Chrystos. “People Are Always Telling Me I’m Too Angry”

[2] Rushin, Kate. “The Bridge Poem”