Claire Lee
It seems like the world is black and white.
The textbooks tell me about “world history”
Plantation owners and their slaves
Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King Jr.
The Nazis and the Jews in World War II
“The Book Thief” and “To Kill a Mockingbird”
Where is the rest of the world?
The segregation of Chinese in 1865
The skull of Vincent Chin crushed by a white man
The 1992 riots in Koreatown that killed 63
Why are people not educated about my story?
They said Civil Rights only applied to African Americans
Then told us to go back to our own country
And called us chink and gook without hesitation.
Then my people fought with other minorities
We banded together to fight the authorities
Because of this I grew up with no fear
Able to go outside without the threatening atmosphere
This doesn’t mean the racism is gone
Afterall, anyone should be able to go take a walk
As my peers pull up the corners of their eyes
They ask me if I can see clearly
And if I can’t help them with math
I am a disgrace to my entire family?
I kept it inside: the humiliation, the anger
But all it took has a virus from Asia
For people to start forgetting that we also suffer
A dad and his two daughters just going to the store.
A woman walking back home through an ally
A young boy, who was simply at college.
Slashed across their faces
Punched and kicked in public
By all races and colors
Even other minorities became enemies
The racists remarks, the ignorant statements
They resurfaced just because of coronavirus
“Don’t talk to me, gook, you’ll get me sick”
“You don’t deserve to live here, you infected chink”
They glare as if it is my fault ― as if I could have stopped it.
There is no sympathy nor kindness.
Not even a fake #prayforwuhan or #alllivesmatter
So tell me world, do you take us for granted?
We give and you take, but nothing is reciprocated
I can see the white, I can see the black
But do I matter?