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To Learn, To Know, To Heal, To Grow

I'm often asked:
'What caused you to collect Slave Artifacts,
And take them on the road, displaying them in cases,
Raw and real? '

My answer is a simple one, 'To heal.'
'To heal? ' they ask. 'What is there to be healed? '
I answer with paternal patience, as
I would a child.
Then, I commence my tale.

It was not long ago two ladies stood
Together at a showing on my tour,
An African American and a Caucasian.
One to seek her heritage,
The other to find satisfaction that
Hyperbole was the foundation for
The stories of the hardships slaves endured.
Within my cases lies reality.

[...] Read more

poem by Lynn W. Petty
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Prometheus, Or, The Poet's Forethought. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The First)

Of Prometheus, how undaunted
On Olympus' shining bastions
His audacious foot he planted,
Myths are told and songs are chanted,
Full of promptings and suggestions.

Beautiful is the tradition
Of that flight through heavenly portals,
The old classic superstition
Of the theft and the transmission
Of the fire of the Immortals!

First the deed of noble daring,
Born of heavenward aspiration,
Then the fire with mortals sharing,
Then the vulture,--the despairing
Cry of pain on crags Caucasian.

All is but a symbol painted
Of the Poet, Prophet, Seer;

[...] Read more

poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Part 1 ~ Teachers

The young girl looked around her room with satisfaction and ease. Breathing a deep sigh she noticed that everything was exactly as it should be. Her bed had been made with military precision so that she sat on the floor to read, do homework, or play while there. Under no circumstances could she disturb the little coverlet that she had so carefully smoothed out wrinkle free. It's edges where sharp, clean and in line with the four walls, something she had tried duplicating from a picture she saw in her mother's J.C. Penney catalog. There was comfort in it's symmetry. Even her stuffed animals were lined up in neat little rows from left to right, the larger animals progressing towards smaller ones, and darker colors giving way to lighter shades. She had carefully named them all and it gave her much pleasure to look at them sitting there at attention, but she wouldn't allow herself to touch them. They, like the bed itself needed to remain flawless. She had just walked home from school where she was failing. Thank God her parents didn't know, but in the back of her mind she knew they would find out soon enough. She had hidden her report cards from them all year, but the fact was, they had never even asked her for them. Didn't they care how she was doing in the 6th grade? She worried that her teachers would hold her back next year, but back then the system rarely did that. The one thing she looked forward to at school was seeing Mrs. Bell. She felt like Mrs. Bell was the only teacher who ever noticed her. This might have been because she was the only Caucasian teacher and she the elementary schools only Caucasian student. In Hawaii most kids went to private school, but her parents couldn't afford that. She reckoned Mrs. Bell knew this and was probably taking pity on her. Now, she was on the floor, piecing together the torn fragments of paper that she had watched her mother throw into the waste basket, wondering what punishment would befall her. She preferred 'restriction' over the belt, but it wasn't up to her. Her mother would decide and then her father would administer it. Methodically she puzzled over the jagged edges of paper, matching up words and gingerly taping the card back together. It had taken some time, for her mother had been thorough at shredding it in her rage. 'Sweet Jesus', she thought, 'When is she going to learn to use matches'? She had to read the handwriting once or twice to ensure she was really seeing what she already knew. She exhaled heavily, the filthy words and images the man had written to her mother filled her with a combination of disgust and relief. She placed his card in between the mattress and box spring of her bed and went to organizing her closet, picking off small pieces of lint left by the washing machine.

poem by Sara Fielder
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Peter the Piccaninny

He has a name which can’t be brought
Within the sphere of metre;
But, as he’s Peter by report,
I’ll trot him out as Peter.
I call him mine; but don’t suppose
That I’m his dad, O reader!
My wife has got a Norman nose—
She reads the tales of Ouida.

I never loved a nigger belle—
My tastes are too aesthetic!
The perfume from a gin is—well,
A rather strong emetic.

But, seeing that my theme is Pete,
This verse will be the neater
If I keep on the proper beat,
And stick throughout to Peter.

We picked him up the Lord knows where!

[...] Read more

poem by Henry Kendall
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If I could rap, that would be a sensation, but I can't, you see, I'm just a Caucasian.

quote by Ryan Stiles
Added by Lucian Velea
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People identify with me - everyone does - African American women, Caucasian women, they all identify with me because I'm ethnic.

quote by Janice Dickinson
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Being Asian in this business is something you have to consider, because sometimes people aren't as open. They'll say, I can't see you with a Caucasian person.

quote by Lucy Liu
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As a matter of fact they'd blacken us down. I guess there's a reason that according to what the Caucasian wanted us to look like. He wanted us to look-if we were Black, then he had his idea of what we look like.

quote by Billy Eckstine
Added by Lucian Velea
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I don't understand labels. I don't need anybody to tell me I'm Latina or black or anything else. I've played characters that were written for Caucasian females, I just want to be given the same consideration as everybody else, and so far that has been happening.

quote by Zoe Saldana
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Forever you, the unwashed Russia!

Forever you, the unwashed Russia!
The land of slaves, the land of lords:
And you, the blue-uniformed ushers,
And people who worship them as gods.
I hope, from your tyrannic hounds
To save me with Caucasian wall:
From their eye that sees through ground,
From their ears that hear all.

poem by Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov
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