In college, I sit in the back with all of the other students of color
and listen as our white peers theorize the hell
out of the oppression that we were born from.
Buzzwords like institutionalized racism class warfare
are sugar on their tongues—sweet and comfortable:
words from a language my community
doesn’t even know exists because we’re too busy
living the realities of them.
It’s one thing to major in Ethnic Studies,
it’s another to be the reason
for its existence.
For the white students in my major,
Ethnic Studies is like a free study abroad program
that doesn’t require that they bring their baggage with them.
A privilege that is easy for them to close in their textbook
at the end of class.
But study my racial profile until
it exhausts you.
Study how Black looks a lot like
the green light for “stop and frisk.”
How Brown has been made
to look like a much-needed check stop
for any given border. Ask me
what it’s like to have your skin be made to
feel like the nuclear missile we all know
is coming.
And you still won’t know how to sit in the back of a class
and be studied because of how tragic your history is,
as if we weren’t brought in to be dissected,
as if Frogs, Rats and People of Color
can only be understood when you cut them open.
When ethnics study Ethnic Studies it’s not school anymore.
It’s a lesson in survival.
And I’m tired of playing teacher with my oppression.
If I’m not doing it on a stage, I’m doing it from the margins of a classroom.
I’m doing it from the margins in my notebook.
Always on the margin of something never the core.
Never asked to be more than what makes me easy
to feel sorry for.
It’s easy to avoid confronting the things that make us
uncomfortable. The things that make us feel guilty.
Who chooses to walk through the warzone
if you were told that you don’t have to?
If you grew up believing that there isn’t one?
If what you don’t know won’t kill you?
Race is the rent I pay for this skin.
But the belief that racism doesn’t exist anymore
is when I feel the foreclosure of this home taking my knees
from right under me.
You can’t claim that racism doesn’t exist
when you’ve never known what it means to survive it.
When you keep looking at the warzone like a teaching moment
you’re not ready to learn the lesson from.
A comfort zone you’re not willing to sacrifice.
It’s easy to avoid confronting the things that make us
uncomfortable. The things that make us feel guilty.
But comfort is what kills us in the long run.
Comfort is sitting down when you should be on your feet.
It’s staying quiet when you should be speaking up.
It’s speaking too much, when you should be listening.
It’s putting up borders for safety, and not
bridges for healing.
Comfort is celebrating diversity, but
never discussing it.
As if a black president is enough.
As if a heritage month is enough.
As if Ethnic Studies is enough.
As if this poem is enough.
Comfort is sitting in the front of the class
forgetting that we’re sitting right behind you.
Wanting to tell you that the warzone still exists.
Wanting to tell you that
this isn’t comfortable
for any of us.
Terisa Siagatonu