Coincidence of race or color or gender, it must be said:
It is not the color of my skin or hair,
nor the unique features of the lips and eyes,
nails, shoes, tattoos, birthmarks, moles, acne,
or the thickness of skin, tautness and stretch of muscle;
Nor the longitudes or latitudes that man made,
renamed, or conquered on which one’s feet stand;
Nor the stereotypes of entombed hearsay in the mind:
given, absorbed echoed with dead dreaded reckoning
that one got it from someone, probably author unknown;
Racism is not science.
It too is a man made noose, too easily swallowed
It can’t be natural
It is learned, copied , parroted, emulated,
and passed on faster than a contagious epidemic,
or slip of the tongue.
It is a manmade tool as dangerous as an axe, pistol knife or gun.
It kills, the felt-yet-unseen healthy heart, the open forgiving mind,
and the passionate spirit of human kindness, mercy and love.
Can the murderers of peace tell you why they kill another’s spirit?
If they ask you, they cannot tell you,
except all of them, without any exception, are bad.
Did you shoot the nurse, doctor, farmer, babysitter,
who served your family and community?
Can you sensibly tell your story and justification
to emotionally and physically maim and expire
the last earthly breathe from someone you know not at all?
If they look like, does not mean, that they are.
There is no right to tag a color,
or another difference between one another.
There is no right to deny the individual their rights.
There is no right to be ignorant or act indignantly
by one’s sense of things collected from nowhere.
No one can justify the elimination, by any means,
of a person because of their suspected race,
country, or continent of origin.
Human life is a right, just as housing,
education and healthcare are … to live.
And so, I say, do not raise a blinded fury tide,
to get rid of, scare, harm or commit genocide,
as another mean, evil, hateful form,
of perpetuating homelessness.
Don’t spread this dread. This must stop here.
