Red/White/Blue

Red is the color of roses and love

and blood,

but only on the outside.

On the inside, blood is blue;

On the inside, blood is glue

biologically keeping my body from falling apart

even though my mind is dying

in the time we live in right now--

disintegrating because we are

still integrating schools

56 years after Ruby Bridges

began building bridges

while we are building walls

in our “post-racial society”—

heavy quotes.

If you’re white, you can see your blood

while it’s still inside you.

If you ever feel less than real,

you can glance at the rivers and the streams

that circulate life through the teeming nature

that is your body.

You can own your own body.

You are real because whiteness is the presence of all colors.

You literally embody

all bodies.

If you’re black, you can only see your blood

while it’s outside of you,

while it’s red

and spilling

and filling the cracks between the pavement

rather than the spaces between your organs;

lying and dying on a street,

seeping redness from blackness

because blueness

got lost in the grayness of what it means to “feel threatened.”

This body isn’t yours

because blackness is literally defined as absence:

the absence of all colors.

If you’re brown, like I am,

you create a problem of identification.

If you’re not Black

and you’re not White,

but you’re not light

and you’re not dark,

your tone confuses me.

Once, upon meeting me,

a man asked me what I am—

not even who

or what I do

or where I grew up,

he just wanted to know what,

as if I’m an exotic species.

So I appeased

his curiosity and ignored

the ignorance,

and I told him that I’m Indian.

Then, he asked what tribe?

This is when I sighed

And prepared my speech:

every time we call

Native Americans

Indians

we are celebrating Christopher Columbus’

defiance of the stereotype that men are good with directions,

celebrating his mistake and geographic misplacement

that gave way to the displacement

and obliteration

of an entire nation

of people who only exist now as mascots and an afterthought

in history books or casinos.

But, of course, I said none of this out loud

because his whiteness

made me feel threatened.

So the question is,

why can’t we just erase all of this?

Color doesn’t matter, you say!

You say, a person is a person no matter how black!

You say, we don’t have a color problem;

we have a class problem!

Well, a green problem is still a color problem to me.

If “ghetto” is synonymous with “black culture,”

then blackness is inherently the absence of greenness.

The capital t Truth is that

this country

is defined by colors:

red, white, and blue

is what makes us American.

But July Fourth marks the independence

of one people

And the gruesome enslavement of another.

Red, white, and blue makes us American.

But so does the heartless oppression of your brother.

Red, white, and blue makes us American:

Redskins

White lash

Blue lives