Your Race Is Not My Race

Your race is not my race
as my face is more rounded than yours
You’d never understand chorizo con papas
nor horchata or al pastor


Your race is not my race
as I have no place
to sit at your table
With napkin and linen lined like
the white walls we call borders


Your race is not my race
as time after time we are beaten,
battered and bloody if not dead
All to keep authoritarians in place
by badge on chest and gun on hip


Your race is not my race
instead you see us as black or brown
both inside and out, yet we the people
are meant to be born as equals?
But in the prequel we were slaves to fields
and in the sequel we are left for dead
within camps, separated from any sense of humanity


As your race lacks the decency
to look me in the eyes
And call me by my name.
Yet we will not abstain from the truth
We, like you, are people too


2-11-20

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