Black, Native American, Latino, White, Asian
Decline to state
What is your ethnicity?
A little box in front of me fails
To see the complexity of my identity

In the face of this bureaucracy
The confusion of my whole life
Follows me
And it bothers me
It really bothers me
That only one category is acceptable

Anger, shame and sadness come up
As the complexity of my identity stares me in the face
Challenging me from behind the linear lines
One box to represent the multiplicity of my history
Check one and only one
And it’s there’s only one right answer
And you are not it
“Half breed, mongrel, mixed girl”
“You don’t exist
You shouldn’t exist”
There’s no room for you
on this piece of paper

Decline to state
Black, Native American, Latino, White, Asian
What is your race?

Well I was
Conceived of colonization
father India married his fate to
Royal mother England
Creating me
Part British part Indian
Wholly human
Yet the ancestry of my motherland
Claims I should not be born
While in India I was the half hidden little secret
My father kept from his family
Were they ashamed of me?

His mother died on her way from India to Britain
Coming to see me
And I’ve held the guilt of responsibility for her death
Believing my blood hold divisions she could not bear to see.

So we moved to the United States
The land of hope, equality & opportunity
Seeking inclusion, prosperity
And respite from firebombs little
British boys were dropping in living rooms
Of mixed raced families

What is your race?
Black, Native American, Latino, White, Asian
Decline to state

Well, I am Indian, and now I am an American, but
Somehow, the American Indian box just isn’t quite right
And Asian isn’t right
Because Indians are barely Asians,
And I being half Indian, well it’s just to far to stretch

And no way in a million years would I check the white box
Submit under this form to the same
Annihilation of my identity?
You must be joking

Too many years of wishing
Too many years of thinking
White was what I desperately wanted to be
Only

None of the other boxes apply
And even if they give me an “other” option
What kind of race is “other” anyway?
And decline to state feels like a cop out
Two minutes too late
I know like you know that you have already
locked me down & judged me
based on what you think you see

Black, Native American, Latino, White, Asian
Decline to state

Pen shaking in my hand, angry;
What’s your race?
Decline to state
Black, Native American, Latino, White, Asian
& the inadequacy of my identity is the reality of my privilege
guilt comes rolling up like waves washing
British ships upon Indian shores
The story of my family tree bringing me
Closest to the Asian category

Asian? How can I benefit from 400 years of oppression
I barely feel the taste of?
How can I claim a history my Indian father taught me
to disown?
What’s your race?
Decline to state
They’ll let you blend in if you
Don’t state
They’ll let you be a normal part of this state
Of affairs

I am inclined now to think outside the box
to redefine this narrow history
and tell a different story on this
piece of paper in front of me
pull the box wide open ‘cos these racial categories
intend to conveniently erase my identity
perpetrate colonization on me again and
again
every time I

Black, Native American, Latino, White, Asian
Decline to state
What’s your race?
& I decline to submit to this state of affairs
and proudly,
as the mixed girl I am
I check off, quickly,
Every single box on the page
Black, Native American, Latino, White, Asian
I state ‘em all, even the “other” box
Watch me
& if there’s a space to write
in my race
I fill in “human”
Declaring unity
& equality
for all to see

I leave no trace of my identity
Make if harder to process me
Into neat little categories
Since love, life, family, my ancestry
Are much deeper than the space
One little box can afford me

It’s about time we set ourselves, humanity
& the little boxes free
about time we
take the matter of the complexity of identity
into our own hands

‘cos where I want to be
it’s all about interconnection & unity
all of us connected
one blood
one people
one love
humanity
no distinctions necessary

‘cos the way I see it
tho' we may mix like apples & oranges
or appear to be different fruits totally,
we all grown from the same family tree
& that’s human, completely,
you see?

—Susanna Barkataki