The verdict was read, while some held their breath

awaiting a divergence from America’s historic trajectory

Since this is two thousand and thirteen, the presumed racialized palimpsest wiped clean

because a darker countenance is projected from the rectory



“Racism’s not dead” and “Justice for Trayvon”

were the refrains issued forth from the steps

Of the imperial structures, representing Blind Justice

for the protesters denounced and they wept



All of sixteen hours, culminating two-days’ works-worth

was the time spent in sequestered deliberation

To mete out a fate, consequently a fete

from a jury pool symbolizing a virginal nation



Purporting to be a tribunal constituting one’s peer group

not from the victim’s for the voir dire was quite certain

For the blacks must stay back, and the brown remain down

only the light side of the defendant’s emits forth from behind the curtain



The social portiere that invariably separates

the varied life experiences of a disparate citizenry

Because the blacks are over here, and the whites are over there

it’s not fair, democratic, nor is it a mystery



For this chasm was forged in this nation’s inchoate offense

that determined the foreignness of the black and white person

Attributable to blacks have been the projection of facts

of despised latent white tendencies considered morally irksome



Wretchedness, maladies, crime-ridden dormancies

the irremediable sinfulness of a constitutive disorder

Slang, ghetto twang, considered baneful with tang

yet, are emulated within this nation’s cultural borders



“How does it feel to be a problem?” arising from that Du Boisian inquiry

essentially objective and perceptive simultaneous

Though the question remains ensuingly asked, yet the truth’s behind the mask

that divides the nation’s white and black, and the rest of us



For that “us” too must be fearful of hyper-extended acceptance

which appears facilely fashioned in demonstrative language

Albeit, the American is there, on the right side of the hypen

and the left reveals lands of origin and preternatural heritage



Captain Sum Ting Wong, and Wi Tu Low are not names

but merely cheap fabrications of racist caricatures

Just ask Ho Lee Fuk and interrogate Bang Ding Ow

how their personages are supposed to reveal real foreign prefectures



The fear is still there; my phenotype and physiognomy elicit it

though credentials and education should attenuate the reaction

When the unassuming woman on the street clutches her purse when I pass by

who’s been conditioned to consider me 3/5’s of a human—just a fraction



So, stereotypes rule the day and racism is institutionalized

because my residence, schooling, and vocation have been designed and fashioned

Yeah, the jury will deliberate but they sure won’t convict

for their pedagogic experience is devoid of one critically and culturally impassioned!