Silk Blindfold

Privilege blinds

When non-melanated voices

Clamor about rioting in Baltimore streets

Prefaced by silence about Freddie Grey

The terrorist attack in Garissa, Kenya

And the kidnapping of the Chibok girls by Boko Haram

Are mere blips on the radar

While Charlie Hebdo gets primetime

I don’t have to wonder

Why #BlackLivesMatter

Because

They only matter most to other Black lives

Black on Black crime is the same as White on White Crime

Yet only one has a term

It’s easier to kill your neighbor next door

Who looks like you

Than to go cross town and shot a stranger

Privilege blinds

Some have the audacity and stupidity

To talk about race

To talk about being colored

To talk about being Black

When they have a choice

Of being English Irish French German Italian Danish

Or just plain ol vanilla white

What else can I be other than Black?

What else can I be other than Ugandan American?

I know as much about being White

As some do about being Black

I know what they say about assumptions

So to avoid making an ass out of you and me

I keep quiet

I observe

I listen

Privilege blinds

Even to the fact that one is blinded

One has the capacity to create what is satisfactory

Eschewing all that goes against the perfect picture

Before the laws, the practices, the regulations

Society holds up White supremacy with our minds

Society supports it with our thoughts

Because when a form of protest

Becomes more problematic

Than issue that is being protested

And no solutions are given

Then what are we seeing?

Where is the clarity?

We are so far gone

In a surreal post racial experience

As some frolic with happiness

They never notice

That they are dancing on graves