Letter to My Coworkers

My skin is not a joke. My black identity is not a punchline. The rage I swallow down is not a commodity that you can sacrifice in the name of "humor"; unfunny words that come down as laughable for their lack of empathy and compassion. Yes, you are snow white but you are not the victim in the story of European colonialism. People like me have been the ones to bite into the poisoned apple and lose the very thing you want to pry from historically weakened hands. Culture.

Like the one, even I have only lived snippets of throughout my life; tangled bits of ancestral memory that don't belong to you. Like the one, I, for a long time, couldn’t bring myself to accept; on my knees, crying because these embedded pigments of mine were wrought with a burden that was never mine. But why did I carry them still? So one day, I could grow up to see how my elders now intangible practices of living were covered up by an imperialistic cloak of lies. One that I would start to decloak realizing your forefathers intended for me to deem myself unworthy for the color of my skin, and not for the strength of my character. Four years away from three scores ago, a dream had sparked and things finally felt like they were finally going to change. Yet today, the eve of my mother’s life long gone, I witness you, like your predecessors, claiming things that are not your own, for yourselves, without doing even that, the right way.

Wearing an “Indian” headdress? Chief is in the wrong Pow-wow. Those cornrows you sport in the fashion industry? The runway seems like a strange school to be kicked out of. In a bitterly funny way, the list of examples goes on, and on. The scent of betrayal fresh in the air, used again to cover up other people from the mainstream, a true white washing stream. Though, the butt of the joke is: you can appropriate my culture, but you can't appropriate my truth.