I am not black
I am not brown
Not yellow or red
I'm not the beauty
Of a colored country
I'm not the stained skin
Of ethnicity
I'm pale
And thin-lipped
And freckled all over
My skin wishes it were better
But it's just a white
A white with no color
No culture
No history
And because I'm so dull
So plain
So white
So... colorless
I would never know
What it's like
To be discriminated against
Or know hardship
Or ever live on the edge of fear
I don't know what it's like
To walk down the streets
And feel unsafe
For being myself
My color of skin may not show it
But I get hated on
I get scorned
I get laughed at
And judged
For being my skin color
I'm told to stop being a racist
Even if I wasn't being racist
I'm told to apologize for my ancestors
When none were here
During the time of slavery
My ancestors came later
From countries
Where they did their own work
I don't get all the scholarships
Because no administrators want to
Discriminate
So they choose the cultural
They choose the beautiful
Over the plain
The dull
I get asked if I'm really poor
And doubted when I say I am
Because my skin means privilege
Even though the cultural
The beautiful
The colorful
Should be the privileged
We
The dull
Have nothing to teach the generations
Except that when you're white
And you live on the bad side of town
And you cry yourself to sleep
In sheer terror
And vouchers save you from
Uneducation
And food stamps save you from
Hunger
And death
When you don't know if you'll actually
Get to eat tonight
And you're white
That it's invalid
And that when you walk to school
The next morning
And the morning after
You don't know if your neighbors
The cultured and beautiful
Will jump you
For pretending
For being a liar
For trying to fit in somewhere you don't
Because you're white
And to be white
Is to know no struggles
To be white is to be guilty
To be white is to be ugly
And worthless
Because you tried
To kill culture
You tried
To kill beauty
And that's your fault
That people you never knew
Couldn't work for themselves
Maybe not even your ancestors
But people they knew
By being white
Everyone you claim heritage to
Is to blame
So you are to blame
I am white.
I am weak.
I am guilty.
I am ugly.
I killed beauty.
I killed culture.
I am to blame.
So I can never face hardship
I can never be poor
I'm a pretender
But the beautiful
And the cultural
Are the real deal
Even though they
Are the ones who
Blame me
YOU ARE READING
Colorless
PoetryHere's a poem you can use for poetry interp or program oratorical interp. I wrote it about being white.