#ethnicity
PEOPLE OFTEN TRY TO GUESS MY ETHNICITY
I'VE BEEN ASKED
IF I'M SAMOAN
BLACK
PHILLIPINO
MIDDLE EASTERN
ETC
I LEARNED TO WATCH
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER
THE CONVERSATION
OF MY MIXTURE
AND IT TAUGHT ME
THAT I CAN TELL
HOW A PERSON FEELS
FROM THEIR GUESS
ONE TIME MY WIFE ANSWERED
FOR A GUY
HE COULDNT HEAR HER
SO I ANSWERED
"PART SPANISH PART MEXICAN
and some other stuff"
THEN HE SAID,
"SHE CAN TALK"
"I KNOW IT'S JUST LOU-"
"MIDDLE EASTERN GUYS
ARE USUALLY LIKE THAT"
HE SAID WITH A BLANK STARE
THAT WAS A PROBLEM
IT'S BEEN A PROBLEM
SO MAYBE PEOPLE
SHOULD STOP
GUESSING
MY ETHNICITY
I AM PERSON
WITH A TAN
Nov 23, 2025
Nov 23, 2025 at 4:42 PM UTC
My hair is black and yours is yellow
But they never call it that;
Blonde, or like spun gold
Stunning, precious, unattainable.
But you have it,
Like I’ll never have you.
My hair is black but my skin
Is yellow
They call it that
“Slant-eyed”, “foreign”, “unnatural”
At eighteen, I broke black locks with bleach
(I’ve always wanted to be blonde)
And it didn’t look natural at all
I will never be blonde, I will always be
Yellow.
They ask: What are you?
“American, like you”
But they roll their eyes
They tell me to forget my native language
And I don’t know how to tell them I already am
Black and yellow
I think of me then think of bees, and recall
Being stung in the first grade, and how
Ever since, I’m paralyzed at the thought
Of black, and yellow
Black and yellow
Save the bees! on shirts and posters
But no one is saving me.
Oct 8, 2019
Oct 8, 2019 at 12:35 PM UTC
A cross section of humanity
lends itself to prose in gross
here, in the airport, sanity
has given up, the ghost
Jesus just walked by
followed by a femme fatale
a lady on her way back home
and a guy they just call, Al
A miasmic gathering of souls
crossections of the human race
to see and/or behold
in or outer, space
Ethnicity oblivious
no one black and no one white
moving through the airport
all are odd, or strange
And every one
just
right
Feb 28, 2019
Feb 28, 2019 at 8:30 PM UTC
You used to tell me that beautiful things come from pain and adversity.
Like motherhood, unconditional love, and true stories.
As I stood in the middle of a room painted white,
Staring at the remains of rolling hills burned to black,
I saw you staring back at me.
Burnt fields like black panther fur
Shining against your bones
Velvet black
You’ve changed
And changed and changed
Yet your love still remains
Burnt fields like black panther fur
Whiskers are the needles on a compass
Always pointing to the azure sky
You used to sing when I cried
Rolling your r’s over rrolling hills
A haunting melody startling black birds into the night
Feathered constellations against a sliver moon
And lips pressed to my salty cheeks
You told me that your favorite skin tone was chocolate,
As you laid out in the sun hoping to melt. “A quarter black” is what you say when you want to feel proud,
Even as you tell me stories of how your mother was called negrita,
The girl who stood too dark amongst the crowd.
Burnt fields like black panther fur
Black like the broken wings of mothers before you
Who had hands with scars from cotton seeds
And blue veins like uprooted trees
Stretching all the way to their tired knees
Burnt fields like black panther fur
You criticize your aging beauty
Speaking in envy of the color gold
Like you are a broken bowl in need of kintsugi
Yet silver snakes still slither
Over the pebbled river beds of your black curls
Dripping down the small of your back
Until they reach the base of your ivory spine
Burnt fields like black panther fur
You criticize your aging beauty
Because you never thought
Cocoa lips and sun spots painted on sculpted clay that never cracks
Could ever look as stunning as it does on you
You told me that it is better to speak my truth then tell pretty lies.
So I told you mine and you cried,
And cried and cried.
But look where we are now,
Standing beside each other with the same eyes,
Just different reflections.
Burnt fields like black panther fur
Tongue like a sword set ablaze
Tempered in pools of milk and honey
Blood red sun grazing the tops of your eyelids
Still reminiscent of those in old photographs
Where you saw the little girl you search for in me
Burnt fields like black panther fur
I am sorry I made you cry
But even when our backs are turned
We are still
Black birds singing in the dead of night
Free
Thank you mama for my broken wings.
Nov 15, 2018
Nov 15, 2018 at 3:11 PM UTC
It was a bag of prejudice tied up with strings of judgement. I would know it anywhere. The chill of its indifference never failed to give me nightmares.
Curious thing this is, never curious about the things that tie, a strange fascination with the catabolic, breaking down bit by bit, every standing bridge, till in loneliness, paranoia takes seed.
You call it religion, I call it fanaticism.
You call it ethnicity, I call it a lack of humanity.
You call it antisemitism, I call it disparity.
Diversity versus equality: we know who always wins.
It is always easier to pull apart.
We pull apart a country, a society, sometimes a family just to fit into boxes that do not matter. Whatever doesn't fit we scatter till we are surrounded by blood splatters.
Cannibalism is bad. It is bad to consume but when you destroy the other when you take away their means of life and livelihood, is it any different from taking their lives?
You notice diversity by the differences, not the radiance of their smiles, that does not depend on colour or creed. It is simply a bunch of basic human need.
But you would rather take than provide. You would rather push everyone aside who is not from your own box and then you put yourself behind locks to protect from those you deprive.
Why not for a change simply be alive, appreciate another life?
Why not smile at another smile, irrespective of race, colour or creed?
A new day starts with a new cry for life, every day, around the world, a new beginning.
Let's open our boxes. Let's give away our prejudices and exchange them for compassion. Let's untie the string that ties us to our antiquated narrowmindedness. Let us spread our wings and fly.
(c) Anavah 2018
Nov 10, 2018
Nov 10, 2018 at 6:33 AM UTC
I am in a box
As I reach out
Touch the walls
This strange barrier that separates me
From the other
Anything external
Different
Other
A hand from the box adjacent to mine appears
Splayed against the wall
I reach out mine
The dark and light contrast
Like the Chinese symbol Ying and yang
Other clearly
Other
Even a child could tell the difference
But,
Who does it take to look past the differences?
Jul 14, 2018
Jul 14, 2018 at 10:13 PM UTC
They ask what I am
As if they could draw a map
On my skin
Paved by my color
My hair
And my name
But even I can’t trace the path.
I’m a mutt of people
Lost
In time
And yet I am here.
And I am human.
Is that not enough?
Apr 17, 2018
Apr 17, 2018 at 12:42 PM UTC
the smell of fresh beans
fills by dreams
beckons me forth to my culture, to my people
acceptance is key, but I'm rejected by the world
simply because I don't fit the stereotype
rejected by my people because I don't speak their language
engraved in my heart are the traditions and beliefs of my people
but my body betrays me
I am Mexican
I am American
but the world makes me choose one
because I don't look the way I'm supposed to
Mar 7, 2018
Mar 7, 2018 at 12:38 PM UTC
I wonder if pictured opinion is found
in the sight of the visually impaired?
& if they might be inclined to share
views meaning behind Beauty Is Blind?
Have they too been sold a melanated lie?
That hue-man shades of brown
ought to be blackened with a frown?
& whitewashed with a lighter sense
of melanted pride?
I ponder,
eyes closed.
Do minds,
deeper see
outside?
© Qwey.ku
Jan 14, 2018
Jan 14, 2018 at 8:49 PM UTC
Infancy talked to me various languages, switching
Tonalities for different melodies, to be learnt.
Naturally acquiring the discernment, recognising
Faces and voices to choose applicable native tongues.
English with my father, whose name echoed as Plato,
Iranian with my mother, Italian with my siblings, French
With school teachers, Greek on summer holidays.
Growing up my hair and accents, led to the inevitable
Repetitive question, ‘Where are you from?’
Timidly answered as it was hard to comprehend, until I set
Myself to do so untiringly drafting precious family trees.
Investigations interrogating relatives to exhaustion,
Ignited my pride for every single drop of blood,
Composing me and drawing borders
On geographical maps delineating my essence.
My story was one of many, they labelled me a multi-ethnic,
For my daddy’s naissance in Accra from a mulatto beauty
Queen, daughter of a British doctor and his Ghanaian lady friend.
For her husband, his Hellenic pater, son of Chios, born in Sudan.
For my mummy’s naissance in Tehran from a noble
Banker, progeny of the Qajar dynasty originally Turkic,
And his pure blood Persian wife.
My parents met in England where they studied only
To marry and move to pre-revolutionary Iran. I was born
In Rome where they fled, when insurrections began.
Now if someone asks I forcefully respond,
“From planet Earth. A terrestrial little sphere at the heart
Of its star system, on the edge of its galaxy lost
Somewhere in space in the maze of the Universe.
My story is one of many, I labelled us humans.
Oct 18, 2017
Oct 18, 2017 at 1:54 AM UTC
i come from whispers of Venezuelan lullabies
y las stories que viene del corazon de mi mama.
the annual celebracion de Corpus Christi is a
constant reminder de la amarilla, azul, y sangre roja
coursing through my veins.
when i was younger,
yo baile durante horas con mi papa
and sung at the top of my lungs
until the last bit of oxygen
en mi pulmones deteriorated.
mi cultura is the incarnation of who i am,
it inhabits every cell en mi cuerpo,
and never will i ever consider
disintegrating the ashes on which mis ancestros
were founded upon.
it's the embodiment of my children, and their children;
it's mi vida y mi alma,
and no one could ever tear down the walls
of this Venezuelan throne.
Oct 15, 2017
Oct 15, 2017 at 11:30 AM UTC
Take a look at me.
Wonder how I got here.
No, really- _wonder,_
don't assume,
because maybe that's humanity's
biggest problem.
Everybody thinks they're smart enough
to tell the story just by looking at its cover.
I am white. I am so white it's painful,
so pale I know the frustration
of never having found a foundation
in my color,
of having to settle,
of being too much of an inconvenience
to make a shade for.
But there is privilege in this;
there is no denying that,
none whatsoever,
and please know: I am not denying anything.
I can't. It is true.
My privilege is skin deep,
bone deep,
inescapable and ever evident,
but it did not get me here today.
Not entirely.
Because no matter how white I am,
my soul has never fit in.
It must be a motley of colors.
I am so white,
yet I'm not white enough-
eating alone and wearing the wrong clothes,
unable to read music
because we couldn't afford piano lessons,
and now that we have the money for birthday parties
no one will ever come.
I am ten shades less tan
than the preferred caucasian
and they will never, ever let me forget it.
I am judged the moment someone sees my family
because suddenly, the puzzle pieces must fit-
that's why she's successful,
she's a rich white girl-
except fortunate parents doesn't automatically
mean you get everything,
doesn't mean I didn't do chores,
doesn't ever mean I got paid for A's
or that college help was guaranteed.
I had to earn it.
A's were expected, chores a duty,
allowances non-existent.
I fought for my success and only then
was I promised assistance
to get through college without drowning in bills,
yet even then
I still had six figures to consider
and weeks' worth of scholarship papers
just to make it out with anything to my name.
Privilege was present,
but privilege was not the reason
I won enough scholarships
to make it through.
I worked.
(It is possible for a white woman to work,
as much as I've heard that it isn't.)
My skin won't tell you that I've suffered,
quite the opposite.
My skin won't admit the times
that I pulled at it, hated it,
the days I wanted to make my pallor permanent
and the day gooseflesh trembled
beneath a blade.
It can't tell you about the tears
or the panic attacks
or the abandonment or depression or inexplicable grief
for joy I never knew,
belonging I never experienced,
and privilege that could not protect me from assault
or hatred,
because most of you wouldn't be listening anyway.
I promise,
there are reasons for my self-loathing.
But you won't know it,
won't even realize it exists as a subplot,
if you refuse to open my book
and learn my story
because my cover is white.
You won't realize that
I am scared to let my friends meet my family.
You won't know I've lost friends after they have.
You won't know that I care,
that I'm angry too,
so furious my teeth are cracking
but I can't say a word.
I am not supposed to.
I have been scolded for it.
Everyone says
not to judge a book by its cover,
yet they still do,
tossing novels aside every day
because their binding is displeasing.
Maybe some of the authors before me
wrote horrible stories,
but you stand to discover an unexpected favorite
if you can give others a chance.
And you stand to find a fellow motleyed soul
by opening that shiny new book you can't trust,
don't want to trust,
and testing the waters of the first delicate page.
Aug 28, 2017
Aug 28, 2017 at 2:15 PM UTC
you said i was exotic,
and i said ooo
what do you mean?
exotic like a fruit?, like
i don’t know what tropics
you think i came from, was
imported from, but you read
my skin like the label
on a flavour of coca-cola
you had never been
offered before and i
was refreshing, and
different. and you liked
the way my coke-bottle
curves felt beneath your
fingertips, said you’d never
tasted caramel
like me before,
you said i was exotic.
like i was a work
of west african art,
even though my mother’s
from the east, like
i was from a storybook like
1001 african nights, like,
you saw my cover and you were
hooked, never did think to
look beneath the jacket,
just wanted stories like the
ones scheherazade sold,
i was your sheba
and you my solomon.
we rode lions across
the sands, your kiss
was salt on my lips,
i needed to quench
my thirst and you offered
me the brand new flavour
of coca-cola.
you said i was exotic,
like a pretty foreign thing,
some mail-order thing,
special delivery
just for you,
a flavour of coca-cola that you
had never tasted before.
Nov 19, 2016
Nov 19, 2016 at 8:09 AM UTC
Carrizo, lamina,
Cemento, y varilla.
Mi casa
Su casa
Sus casas.
Te busco
Te deseo
Y no te encuentro.
Fotos
Mapas
y Recuerdos
Es donde te tengo.
Escucha,
Habla y dime,
Como esta
Mi pueblo.
Villa de Etla,
Querida,
Adorada.
Dec 30, 2015
Dec 30, 2015 at 1:34 PM UTC
So I am a mutt
And this is my poem about having split identities
*And not knowing who the **** I am*
I am Chinese and Irish
Got them green eyes, but eat rice with every dish
Have the freckles, but my first language wasn't English
Back in high school, people called me white washed
But then,
Pointed and called me that Asian
People would sneer, "You aren't even real Chinese"
But there are so many things you all don't see
Like how my Tiger mom screams at home
About getting straight As
Till her shrills leave me frozen to the bone
And when I had a boyfriend she didn't approve of
She yanked my hair
And I cried it wasn't fair
She yelled, "oh I'll give the boys something to stare"
I watched as she cut all of it off
Strand by strand
Like a strong gust of wind blowing all the leaves off the branches till it was bare in winter
The following day at school, my excuse was I needed a new look, so this was her
And meals I don't even know how to translate into English are my comfort food
But I can down some fries and burgers when I'm with the dudes
I embrace both sides of what I am
But people categorize me into one, God ****
With my Chinese family
They straight up tell you
You too skinny, too fat, so silly
They say my accent has gotten worse
The anger builds up of embarrassment and hurt
The race makes my face so red, it's like my head will soon burst
There's this underlying feeling of shame, that's the worst
Which side of me do I need to prioritize first?
I'm drowning between the ocean of two separate cultures, I'm submersed
English is the language I think in and I curse
There's so much more I can't even tell you within this verse
Oh the irony doesn't end there
My driving stereotypes are quite the scare
Cause I'm Chinese, automatically I **** at driving
But mixed with Irish, I'm also road raging
It's probably the worst combination
Of a stereotype from two different nations
Ha oh there's more
The drinking stereotype that's for sure
Irish side could down the whiskey much too quickly
But the Chinese typically are easily tipsy
This mix is kind of risky
One turns so incredibly red
And the other can get so drunk, you'd see two heads
I feel I am constantly at war
One side always wanting more
Jul 28, 2015
Jul 28, 2015 at 3:03 PM UTC
With the box lid closed
It's dark inside,
There are no colours
We can't abide.
But a golden sliver of light seeps in,
To expose the colours there within.
We see red when enraged,
And scarlet dancers crowd our stage;
A red-blooded male brags virility
Through rose-coloured glasses of masculinity.
Some grow green with envy,
Reveal they're yellow in enmity,
Are blue when feeling empathy,
Turn blue holding out for sympathy,
Are tickled pink with comedy,
And white as a sheet with tragedy,
Or brown-nosed with syncophany.
If your yellow-bellied you may run,
And green-gilled after Jamaican ***
Write purple prose when versifying,
Ashen coloured when you're dying.
True colours show outside the box,
Use grey cells to colour unorthodox.
Our true colours are harlequin,
That fade to black at our end.
Jul 5, 2015
Jul 5, 2015 at 3:51 PM UTC
Mr Jonah was sent to Nineveh
He head out but took a detour
Now in the belly of the beast.
Mr Jonah cannot change things overnight
Says his town's men
Who will Carry or move anything
Without power?
Obviously no one, so we need power
They also said;
That's not possible overnight.
Our palm oil is dry
No groundnut oil to fry
Nobody is buying our powerful oil
Yet we have to sell before we boil
If we don't sell something
We will not eat anything.
Our children are misbehaving
Is this the future we are saving?
Will Mr Jonah build a place
Full of tutors?
Well,that's not possible overnight
Cows everywhere
Is there no one to check these cows?
Mr check cow is busy
Burning our farms and farmers
Mr Jonah cannot stop Mr check cow
Not overnight.
365 days make a year
How many years make an overnight?
The writer coughs;
6 years makes one night.
Wait o, is 6years overnight?
Mar 6, 2015
Mar 6, 2015 at 4:41 AM UTC
I am not a true minority.
I am white woman.
I believe in feminism because that is what I experience.
But what about what I don't experience?
It pains me to have a power and to not know what to do with it.
Race is still an issue.
I hear these words all the time, but do I really hear them?
There are people out there who want to be married and they can't. I sit on my social media and say what should be said.
Sometimes.
Is that enough?
I have the power.
So why am I wasting it?
Feb 23, 2015
Feb 23, 2015 at 10:57 PM UTC
Listen to the minority’s burden
There are more than you may see
Your idea of equality
Is quite different from what I believe
The facts are alive and well
And terribly ignored
By many common folk who can not tell
What all we’ve been fighting for
Listen to our burdens
They’ve been here all along
Since the pale folks came for us
And decided they knew where we belong
Listen to my burden
I am more than my ethnicity
But no one pays attention to my character
Thank you, oh dear society
I’m not here to do your math homework
Or be the punch line of your joke
Or be the one who is categorized
As a yellow, squinty-eyed bloke
We have countless burdens
So listen to what we say
Please stop your patterns of racist jokes and ignorance
And realize that change must begin today
Dec 21, 2014
Dec 21, 2014 at 9:39 PM UTC