I, a black man, have recently come to realize the futility of racial identity. America as a whole arrived at such a plateau when we elected Obama as our president; a place we have all been as children, as citizen of some heterogeneous land, or as having possessed a precociously rightious awareness.
There was a time, a place, perhaps a state of mind
long before this longing for simpler belonging
before being a man became relative
so contextual, so if, so defined by senses
a man was all he dreamed, and all that he could wish
he was a man in town, and everywhere a man
in weaknesses, in strength, in his loves, in his hates.
it may have been your world, your neighborhood, your school,
before you saw it through monocultural eyes.
eyes that now see limits; eyes holding back your humanity
ethnicity and race, accent and complexion
words for dictionaries, exotic and unused
were not there to color my every perception
I had not yet met me, the black man
the colored man
the nappy-haired man
the fried-chicken-eating man
the athletic man
the dancing man
the violent man
the white-woman-raping man
the no-child-support-paying-man
the cotton-picking man
the ethnic man.
you see,
I had not been trying to be a multicultural man
I only knew to be what every man should be.
I was simply a man, a man… a MAN!!!
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