My Red and Your Red

I came from a land of swirling, colorful paintbrush strokes
From smooth, grass fields like vast, green carpets rolled out over the Earth
From the soft, gentle twang of our flowing music, our beautiful language
From dense, diverse forests, soaring mountains, and roaring rivers

Even before we moved from our land
My mama proudly told me, bragged to me
How we had 5,000 years of history compared to their primitive, mere 200
How our people, our culture, transcended time and space
Wove in between the threads of the world
And that I shared our blood

And I was proud of it, proud of all of it
Proud that I had been created by those same paintbrush strokes
That my mother, and countless others before her, had been
That I was from the land of bright scarlet red
Speckled with the sparkle of golden stars

When we came here, it didn’t take me long to discover the white pool in our backyard
It was a strange thing, a different thing from anything I’d ever seen
I approached it tentatively, cautiously
But also curiously, hopefully, excitedly

As I got closer to the pool of white water
I heard whispers of a language I didn’t understand
A sharp, staccato tongue with vibrato slangs and jokes
Strange music in the distance, the stinging beats of drums
The whoop and holler of people, with the whistles of the referee mingling in
The savory smells of freshly cooked food, the sugary sweetness of tarts and cakes
The crash of thunder, the flickering screens of movies
And as I got closer…and closer…just a couple steps closer
Something fluctuated in the pool
It wasn’t only white anymore
Other colors ebbed and flowed in between the waves of white
There was red!
Just like the red from my homeland!
But there was also a bit of blue
A magnificent, royal blue
And countless others too
A rainbow and that flowed and changed
Like an opal, changing with each shift in perspective I got

As I stood at the edge of that pool, some of the voices cursed at me
But they were only the tiniest of dark spots
Amidst the sea of welcome that awaited me
I heard screams of joy as I approached
Encouraging shouts and beckoning calls
I could have sworn I saw hands from within the water
Reaching out to take mine
To help me into the pool
And show me what lay in those fascinating depths

But Mama and Baba warned me
They said there would be…temptations
I didn’t know that they would come in the form of this pool
The strange, but captivating other world that was just underneath its surface

So I very carefully
Very slowly
Stuck one finger
A single finger
Into the water
It was beautifully warm and a hostile cold all at once
But the satisfying warmth overpowered the frigid discomfort
I submerged my whole hand
It felt amazing
Weird, but truly amazing

When I took my hand out of the water
It was stained white like its waves
Like a glove I had slipped over my fingers
Only this?
It felt like it was a part of me now
And I felt happy
I felt almost as if I was home

I ran back home and showed my people, my family
I showed them my hand
I told them the sounds I heard
The sights I saw
The colors that evanesced in the pool amongst the white
The smells of the food, the taste of the air
The thunderous, powerful bang of the music
I reached out and took Mama and Baba’s hands
About to guide them to the pool in our backyard
I wanted to show them what I saw
Let them experience what I had
And maybe
Just maybe
They would feel at home, too

But my people turned around
Seizing my hand and staring at it instead
“No! What have you done?” they shouted
I was confused
I wasn’t sure what I had done

“You’ve become whitewashed!” they panicked in a frenzy
They grabbed my now-pale hand
Rubbed it over and over and over with their own
Some of their color, my color
Bled back into my skin
But the whiteness was still there
It had left its mark on me
And they were angry

“Stay away from there”
“Those are not your people”
“You’re forgetting your culture”
“You’re forgetting who you are”

“Don’t
Become
Whitewashed”

Whitewashed
What did it mean
To be whitewashed?

Why did the fact that I touched the white mean that
I was giving up the intricate, careful paintbrush strokes that made up my old home?
Why did the fact that I liked the blue of the new land meant that
I was wiping away the shimmer of the golden stars from where I came?
Why couldn’t the bright scarlet of my people’s blood and our land
Coexist with the deep, rich crimson of America?
In the end aren’t
My red and your red
Both the same color
Just in a slightly different shade?

Why can’t I have
Both my red
And your red?