Untended Gardens

I hate my racism.

You white people saying you’re not racists?  You’re all liars.

Racism grows on your heart like kudzu, unwanted

untended, leaving little room for useful plants to grow

You must hack it away, burn it, revile it

Tear it back from the tender seedlings

Empathy, understanding, courage

Tear it back so you can see what lies beneath, yank it out by its grasping roots

We ALL fear the other.

“But they’re racist too!” you sputter, the toddler’s lament for justice

“you’re right”, I say, “now hush”.

We are ALL racist.  We are all filled with

Bitter stories and years of fears

Suspicion and unfulfilled curiosity

They’re racist too.  They.  Always they.

So?

Is that your only excuse?  It’s a bad one.

We can only tend our own hearts, mend our own weakness

Your racism lives in that sidelong glance

That shiver of the shoulders when someone is behind you

It lives in the weak smile and downcast eyes

It lives in the way you read the news

First skin is suspect

Then hoodies

What next

Breathing?  Speaking?  Living?

You know you thought for a second there must be a reason

That boy was shot.

Admit it.

My momma didn’t raise me that way.

All people were equal, and I was not allowed

To let the word “hate” past my lips, not even for broccoli. 

But she couldn’t stop the world’s whispers

She couldn’t stop the parade of white faces only

On tv

And anyway

All people didn’t live in our neighborhood.  Only a few people

a lot like us.

But I was different. 

“Mom, what’s a kike”? 

She froze in place like a button had been pushed and slowly

Asked

Where

I

Heard

That

Word.

But she didn’t tell me.

Didn’t tell me what it meant, didn’t tell me

How it applied to me.

‘Cause see, we weren’t supposed to be Jewish

we were WHITE, and that meant

we were above that name-calling

above the bad words

we had taken on the mantle of that privilege

when my parents slipped rings on now Catholic fingers

with my grandparents barely there, at the last minute

deigning to attend their only child’s forbidden marriage.

We were WHITE.   We were Catholic.  And that matzah-ball soup

Your grandma makes for you

That’s just an East Coast thing.  Pay it no mind.

Difference followed me.  Followed me like the old man

That slithered down the sidewalk after me

After he hissed, apropos of nothing,

“I’ll bet you one thin dime you’re a Jew”.

I guess he earned his dime, earned it from my bushy hair,

My big nose, my…what?  How could he know about me

What I didn’t know myself?

But by that time

I had embraced the other

Thrown it over my shoulders like a grand cape

Festooned and shaved my colored hair, hammered spikes through

The cracked black leather of my coat

Left my legs unshaven and pierced every extra flap

Of tattooed white skin

If you wanted to hate on me, I’d give you a target.

Give you a reason, take a number,

Bring it on. 

Because I could choose that.

We were WHITE. 

I could choose,

But still not pass.

We justify our hate.

We tell ourselves stories,

That it’s worthy of tending

That it’s earned

That

That

That those people over there, they’re just DIFFERENT

You don’t understand.

But I do.

I live in this country too,

And feel ashamed when I think

To lock the car door passing through certain neighborhoods

Feel ashamed when I judge

The cashier’s pronunciation of “ask”

And recognize her judgment reflected back through brown eyes

Because I am found unworthy, too

We all judge one another.

We are all unworthy.

What happened that night

Will never be known

And we can argue through all the ones remaining, but

There is only one pertinent fact

And that is

That a boy is dead.

And his body is feeding the kudzu

That chokes out other life in the south

That covers all the habitable spaces

That camoflages the world into a blanket of sameness.

There is only one pertinent fact.

A boy was shot.

And the man who shot him is free.

And a nation has forgotten to tend its garden,

And has allowed the kudzu to swallow it.

But I’m not a racist, you say.

That boy, he was suspended

He had a hoodie

He had some skittles and an iced tea

And a girl on the phone that clattered against the pavement

Before it went silent forever.

Please know this: you are.

Now: tend your garden.