Separate is Never Equal

There’s a profound shift in the weather, the Earth is stretching and calling us outside. And I am split in two.

I’m going to need my morning coffee, if only for show. I’ll sip it as I walk to class. Pretending I’ve gotten used to the bitterness. Pretending I don’t hear the chanting on the street. Pretending for a moment, there isn’t a white man screaming white supremacy in the White House, as brown families are being ripped from their homes.

I swear it was green. The foliage pressed on the glass above the bus stop. I thought, isn’t the earth so beautiful, with all this color? But the picture turned black without film to separate reality from hue. I’ve been thinking about the word ‘segregation’ and how separate but equal has never existed, and how the white people who share my skin tone, repeat their red history.

I’ve been thinking about how certain people did not learn from the past, but use it like a Mein Kompf manual to repeat atrocities. How it is so obvious, so very obvious. And yet, so many other white people don’t care about the white supremacy in the White House. They don't care about the brown families being torn apart.

My worries to my white family fall on deaf ears, and I turn to my partner, the love of life, and thank the stars we no longer live in America.

Where does an interracial couple stand when segregation kicks the back of their knees? Where do the interracial children go to feel safe? When hatred has such an obvious face. You cannot separate a body. There is no separate but equal.

I’ve been thinking about the burden of love. How, when you love someone, a group, a country, an ideology, your good judgment fogs. And goodness is sometimes forgotten. We separate our goodness and our love.

I took this photo today. It made me fall to pathetic anger. I kept trying to adjust the settings on my phone. I kept trying over and over again. But the light refused to penetrate. I nearly missed my bus. I sat on the creaking seat beside a stranger and carried on through the city, pretending not to be seething. But I wasn’t mad at my camera. I wasn’t mad at my phone. I teared up in frustration because I wanted you to see the green, I swear it was there, lying about the blue. Separate, but equal in beauty.

I wish there were a way to reach you. I wish there were a way to educate a group of white supremacists. But the problem is, they already know. And they like the outcome of separation and pain.

Ice,

It’s love they’re lacking. They've chosen to embrace pain and suffering. They strap on their little vests and play make-believe Nazi, while real people are torn apart from their homes.

In all my years of teaching, I still don’t know how to educate a white supremacist to care.

I’m deeply frustrated and hurt by my Trump-supporting family members. I have completely cut them off. They dare to act confused by my presumed abandonment. But how dare they support segregation, racism, and bigotry of any kind, then expect me and my Korean husband and future interracial children to feel safe and loved in their presence?

Their hypocrisy and selfishness pull my heart down into my stomach until I am nauseated. And ironically, sometimes separation is needed.