Skip to main content

A Nation of Color

I feel rather left out of the political process.
No one has asked to see my papers. 
I think it is because I am wrinkled and pink. 

I don't like to say, "pink", but I held a gym sock
up next to my face, and I definitely was not white.
In the same kind of discouraging way, I used to say
that my hair was gray, but everybody else said, "bald".
I cannot bring myself to say my hair is pink.

Barack Obama doesn't have that problem. 
People want to see his papers, and say
that he has taken our country away from us,
mostly because we elected him President,
and he isn't white, or pink.  He is kind of brown,
and that means he probably isn't one of us pinks.
There is some doubt about that, I guess:
some people call him a pinko; you know,
a socialist, or maybe a fascist, or un-Alaskan.

Most Mexicans aren't pink, either, nor are most
Native Americans.  Or Asians.  Or Afro-Americans.
In fact, most human beings aren't pink, which explains
why most human beings aren't Americans. 

What I am sure of is that almost no Americans are white.
A casual stroll down almost any American street
will make it clear that no one looks like a gym sock. 
(I am referring here to a new gym sock!  Any test
of genuine American patriotism that involves a gray
gym sock is not a valid citizenship test.)

So I am puzzled.  No one is really white,
and if you aren't really white, you probably look illegal,
and should show your Kenyan passport. 
We pink people probably just have to take our chances.
We aren't really white.  Certainly not brown. 

Well, most of us pink people will have to risk it: 
not John Boehner, the only pinko who can travel to Arizona,
undocumented, and probably get deported.  He isn't
really tan; more like orange, but it is a chance he takes. 

Please!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...

AT YEAR'S END, 2014

Ah!  There you are!  And so are we! After more than thirty years, sometimes Mari and I look at each other and say how surprising it is that we have found each other.  It often happens when we have decided that neither one of us wants to go adventuring: you know, to the grocery, or to a movie; or least of all, to a party designed to disguise gravity, deny arthritis, and display bottomless good humor. At the same time, sometimes Mari and I look at each other and say how surprising is everything that has happened to us.  The world we grew up in has gone, and now there is another, and that we are still here, as we were, and altogether new. It is Jao we are thinking of. This year, more than any other in our lives, has been the year when a grandchild has occupied a significant portion of our ordinary lives.  We have, in our various ways, come to have several grandchildren, but this time one of them has lived so nearby that we could walk to where he...