culture fix

1.

An Afrikaaner can spend 40 years of his life
and not have any idea of the blackness of his nation.
this is not wishful thinking, it is social fact
(carefully orchestrated, as most are).
in other words, any struggle against racialism must
-in the first place-
establish that racialism is, in fact, functioning.
in other words, those who oppose race must *exist* first,
and from there some insistence, some disruption can be made.
ideally, the disruptive act simultaneously proves the existence
of the system that is being sabotaged.

2.

Does a racial system make itself known through the ambiguities
or the hard edges?
one hundred years of terror following reconstruction
is clear enough.
but don't the decades following the civil rights act
sting more?
black-face minstrel shows re-prove a certain point,
and yet, what is the 2nd generation asian-american engineer
if not a peculiar kind of a caricature?
wherever the lines are drawn, they cut through us.

3.

Children in this country grow
slowly cognizant of the void
that must be their identity.
a society that cleaves apart and tears asunder ethnicity
cannot answer the most basic questions
of its offspring.
when "who am i?" no longer has a satisfactory answer,
the moral fabric of a nation is of no use.
there are those who cling to old identities:
teachings from places and times
that are not here and now
but they are ridiculed by their conditions.
the dominant 'culture' will not allow for their nostalgia,
and their children refuse to believe.