What do you see when you look at me?
A black girl with afro hair or a mixed-race girl with the ‘accepted’ curl pattern?
People look at my mane and ask, ‘how did that happen?’
Does it just grow out of your head like that?
Do you just jump out of your bed like that?
Did you manipulate it or were you bred like that?
It’s like that.
Not white enough to be white, not black enough to be black, not whole enough to be anything, not too this or too that.
Not dark enough to be down, not white enough for the crown.
Just white enough for the TV, just black enough for the CV
The race with no face, the race with no place, the race that can’t be won, the space ok for some
White privilege chatter, black lives matter, am I a victim of the former or a poster for the latter?
The brown faced mulatto, hear the soul in my vibrato, the milk laced coffee, the light skin macchiato
The white lie, to dispel the black magic, this spell cast upon my ‘half caste’, a non-entity. What’s my identity? Who am I meant to be? The slave owner or the slave, who is the enemy? How will you remember me, laid down in history? We are the mystery….the face of black victory…?
The first black president, the white house resident, became the man, the ‘yes we can’, was the white side relevant? The controversial royal on British soil, the brown princess sparking up a royal inquest. The protestor that sung “one love”, the mixed races society picks one of. The biracial, facial enigma, the dual heritage stigma…which forces people to ask me to choose, like which half of me do I want to lose, like when you dilute you confuse, like we were sent to this earth to bemuse…
Is there left without right? Is there day, without night? If there is black, there is white, there is no wrong, there’s no right.
I’ll never be black enough to know the struggle or white enough to dust off the rubble.
Ancestors raped by the white man, shaped by the white plan, so now where do I stand?
Walking this zebra crossing path, as this chessboard pawn, paying the barcode price, singing my song on the black and white keys, solving the lifelong crossword puzzle, seeing the world through my monochrome eyes. I hate these monochrome lies!
So where do I fit? On which side do I sit? Which box do I tick? Which tab do I click? Quick, make me pick, make it stick…it makes me sick. I will not be trapped in the past, snapped by the caste, snatched by the farce, slapped by a stance. I am both my Father and my Mother, I am not one or the other and sorry if that makes me weird, or makes me feared, or makes me difficult to define, too difficult for your mind, too intertwined to bind, too black and white for mankind.
I wish the whole world was colour blind.
