Kristen Brown - Native Identity

Quit trying to place me in a neat little white box
Quit telling me who I am because I know who I'm not
I'm all shades of pale
My veins they bleed
But I'm not just a white girl. I'm native, Cherokee.

My skin is not red like the sun is hot
I don't speak the tongue my ancestors have too soon forgot
But to assume you know my ethnicity based on what color you see
Is to reduce my identity to a complete simplicity

So before you make assumptions
Listen to the words that I speak
Because not even I
Understand the complexity that is me

I feel like a person who isn't recognized.
I'm only known for how I'm seen. A wandering undefined.
The ethnicity I claim is what most will never see.
In a society ruled by appearance, I'll never be seen as me.

Do you know what it's like to feel like an interloper among your own race?
To look in a mirror and not see your own face?
I know who you're looking at right now. I know that's who you see.
But when I see her in a mirror, I don't see me.

I see someone else's daughter, cousin, friend.
Someone else's classmate with milky white skin.
But coming to terms with how my two identities could coexist.
Has never been clear and has never made sense

Because if you judge by appearence it's all easy
One identitiy is forced on me
So the other might as well not exist.

Kristen Brown

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/native-identity/