Biracial boy in social justice seminar is asked to join a racial affinity group:
People of color or white.
White boy does not want to infiltrate safe space for people of color.
Brown boy does not want to keep white people from having honest, constructive, dialogue.
Biracial boy does not know what he is.
Recalls posting a survey on facebook in middle school asking how people categorized him.
That it would determine his clothes,
His music, how he spoke.
Biracial boy wishes his skin came with an instruction manual.
Brown boy tells white boy he should not identify as a person of color,
That he can pass.
That he should not appropriate a struggle that is not his.
White boy tells brown boy he will not identify as white,
Erase the brown from his blood,
Will not be the one who finishes the colonization of his own body.
White boy visits family in Mexico and realizes he is the whitest intruder since Conquistadors.
Brown boy goes to white synagogue,
Is in the only family not invited to the dinner party.
Biracial boy is welcome everywhere.
Biracial boy is not welcome everywhere.
Biracial boy is tug of war but biracial boy is both sets of hands pulling at each end.
And biracial boy is sorry for this poem,
For taking up space,
Does not know if it’s his white self that’s doing so.
If it’s even letting the brown self speak.
White boy apologizes for his privilege.
Brown boy resents white boy for taking up so much space with apologies.
White boy says “I’m sorry”
Brown boy says “you’re doing it again”
Brown boy hates his white,
His legacy like shingles all all over his face.
White boy gone, but biracial boy to brown family is still white.
Still looks like Keote.
Biracial boy is both the discolored sheep of each family and the dog that hunts it.
Wishes he were purebred, and not a mutt.
Brown boy asks white boy what it’s like not to get profiled.
To go to your cousin’s wedding in Arizona and feel safe.
White boy goes to white barbecue,
Meets white cop.
White cop does not know that boy is biracial,
Starts talking immigration policy.
Brown boy screams,
Hides inside white skin.
White skin silence
White skin shields
White boy’s protecting.
White boy savior.
Brown boy does not need white savior.
Brown boy strikes back at white self
But biracial boy during colored uprising does not know if he should sit down or speak up.
To which army society has drafted him.
Biracial boy is tug of war but biracial boy is the rope,
Is fraying,
Can not hold his selves together.
Biracial boy hates being two different selves,
Recalls it’s the world that made him this way.
That splits him in half.
Holds oppressor and oppressed.
Insect and the boot.
And biracial boy is both of them.
effervescene 