Roses are red, violets are blue
What if no color was true?
We all bleed red and all see blue skies,
Yet different skin equals hate in our eyes.
It may not happen to him nor I,
And because of the difference,
many races doubt their lives.
It leads to a life of crime and untrustworthy cops,
A race to the end of this was all he thought.
And now growing up it still proceeds to happen,
So he keeps his head down in frustration;
An observant life and no confrontations.
He sees white like you say black
Except he is at wrong for saying something back.
Wanting to live a life so full while getting restrained
But besides skin color, they are the same.
Only a white person gets a police citation,
Until the world makes a change, no one will win.
We will all suffer from this name game
It should be taken more serious for it is insidious.
All races struggle to be superior
Why does color make us judge the legitimacy of a man’s exterior and interior?
Eye to eye, hand in hand
Equal is where I stand.
I recently had a talk with an old high school friend, Michael Combs. We discussed differences between our races and what he personally deals with due to the color of his skin. In my class that I am taking at UMKC, Anchor 214 European Culture, we were assigned to read the graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman. In Maus, a comic book, one is able to find numerous hardships that the Jews had to overcome during the Holocaust. The story is about the author’s Jewish father, who endured the Holocaust from start to finish. Spiegelman’s intent for writing this comic was to not only try to fully understand his culture’s history during the Holocaust but to also find his purpose as a modern day Jew. He used animal masks to identify and symbolize different social groups; Jews, for example, wore masks that portrayed witty mice trying to run from the authority of German soldiers that were seen as cats. I would like to connect my conversation with Michael to these symbols used in the book to further explain how sometimes, covering identity takes away from who you want to be- the real you, an uncovered face in society who is seen for who they are. Michael learned at a young age that he was not going to be seen the same as everyone else. After racing a white boy in elementary school and being called out for his dark skin, he realized his life was always going to be different. During my talk with him, he said something that stuck out to me: “As long as people see color there isn’t much we can do” (03:40). After growing up, he told me that he has consciously decided to embrace adversity and stands up for who he is as a man, which has shown his true identity. Michael does not need a mask like the characters in Maus wore, but a lot of cultures around the world feel they need to cover up who they are for safety reasons and to dodge harm. Justice for discrimination is a never-ending, ongoing story that many cultures will have to deal with for generations. Until the world does not see color or difference anymore, discrimination will always be a problem.