on race

I'd like to say I'm angry, cuz it's easier that way
Punch you in your face
Like the sucker punch that were your words
on already vulnerable ears
Ears the color of wagons I was wheeled around in
as a small child
But only if I see the sun
Otherwise they're just ivory utensils...
"Ivory utensils that observe as they wish", you say

I know how it must look to you

But it isn't
When you take away my wagon color
when you write me down in your history books
as nothing but void of hue...

grayness

By definition you take away my right to culture
My right to the red man's lament, maybe?
 I feel every day
It's unspoken and unseen...

Much like the impoverished blacks, and Rednecks lament was unseen.

There were white slaves when this country was founded
The condition you refer to-slavery-
look up where it came from
Slavs- Whites of East European Origin.

We're all in this tormenting society of humans together.

My tears are for all the injustices
I cry for being an outsider!
who wants badly to be let in,
who wants badly to stop being incriminated,
by a face that depicts a story in contrast to my experience!
I cry for the fact that any person feel uncomfortable in their skin,
as I do.
I am not devoid of hue
my background is not grey.
But on most days I'm white girl,
gone grey.
I am colored with all the bloodstains on the Trail of Tears
 I am marked by memories of platanos y arroz con pollo
hardships of a racial
identity
I can hide from.
Assert.
or give up....
Yes, I have thought about what it is to be white

Passing does not mean you excel.
and the proof is in the grades!
You see your peers hand out A's to those who
sit quietly,
speak respectfully,
work diligently,
promote capitalism,
watch injustice done,
and cry about the differences they don't see.

I do not receive those passing grades

I can walk by and you may hear, resoundingly,
"white girl"
through that uninhibited place in your subconscious.
but when I speak -
the whites,
they hear "something is amiss....
Something deeply wrong and alien"
Their blue/green/hazel (who cares what color) eyes
switch back and forth ominously
Somehow I didn't play the role right, and gave it all away.

I am not of their shade.

I find myself locked to a color
which I can't live in
cannot escape
cannot refute to those I could find myself aligned with
and, ultimately, cannot change.


I may 'pass', as you say
but I fail at race,
either way.