Lots of blogging about white privilege around here lately. Made me think of this poem by Maureen Seaton (who happens to be white, and a professor at the University of Miami). Taxis always stop for me, and I am always “sir”. It is not always so with all of God’s children.
When I Was White
When I was white I came and went, a cycle
of blood and moon and tide, hid nothing
of gun-shape inside me, debated evil
with no one. I said: Bring me something
handsome to eat and they did, that steak butter,
you could spread it on bread. I said: Bring
me taxis. They flew to my side and uttered
“Get in” and “Where to”, just the thing to carry me.
I said: We are all the same No Matter
What. This was my zaniest folly.
I had blinders on the sides of my head
big as real estate, blue as jelly. We
are all the same Underneath, I said,
and you could count the dusty liberals
nodding in deadly agreement, dead
as the Pope, dead as the Nazis, doornail
dead like the sunnies along Lake Michigan
and the poor bastard steadying his pole
ten feet up the beach. Jesus again,
this time with a sweet brown Chuckie B. face,
and I am beside you in the Bargain
Villa on Clark. I’ve traveled decades
through dead seas, I’ve seen my people flap
on their sides as they die of too much shade,
you can count them piling up on the maps
of the world, the unsightly word “equal”
a sticky drool from the Oh of their lips.
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