Scathing Poetry on Why Racist College Parties Are So Disturbing

February 6, 2015 / Jozer Jozer

“Didn’t your mother teach you to respect the dead?”

We’ve seen it all: fraternities and sororities throwing parties that mock indigenous people and Mexican culture. Photos of themed events showing party-goers sporting blackface, and more.

Here’s a poet who knows first-hand why these parties are so horrendous.

This is what happens when violence still haunts our family’s histories as our culture is mocked for fun.

Click for the Transcript

To the fraternities and sororities who mocked my culture with their themed parties. Your skin tone has never bothered me.

It’s the way you wore it around your neck like a whip that pissed me off. You spoke without any mitigation or remorse of my people.

You’ve never had to. In your eyes, we’ve always been the janitors or “landsceepers.” When I walked into your party and you asked me where my sombrero was, you awakened the Zapatista inside me.

“It’s a B-Y-O-B party, bro. Bring your own burrito.” Suddenly, my hunger for his blood awakened.

Uses sangre as chile for my tacos de asada, a real Mexican dish. Shit, I was angrier than a cholo on ankle bracelet. I wanted to cut his ass and sacrifice him to the Gods of Tlatelolco, but the offering would have been insulting.

And quite frankly, violence still haunts my family’s history, so I choose not to practice it.

And when your tongue is carved from obsidian stone, you know your words can be sharper than daggers so I spoke instead in the voice of Emiliano Zapata. “[Indecipherable words in Spanish] de un guerrero Mexicano!”

This imbecile does not deserve to wear the uniform of a Mexican warrior, so I took the burrito from his hand, and I snatched my grandfather’s sombrero from his girlfriend’s head. Didn’t your mother teach you to respect the dead?

The dead, the dead, the dead called and asked me to retrieve their belongings. So I’ll take my grandma’s feathers and my little sister’s magazines.

My mama always taught me to ask before taking things that did not below to me, and just in case you have forgotten, we do not belong to you.

Our prized possessions are not props for your misinterpretations of “Indian” parties, your racist mascot in disguise dressed in blackface in the name of diversity.

May Tonto haunt you and Johnny Depp’s ass!

“Eh, bro, we’re just trying to celebrate your culture over a few drinks.” Motherfucker! Ain’t nobody need you fumbling drinks over our shit.

Enough alcohol has been spilled on to the pages of my people’s history already. Now go on, you little bastard, and tell all your little bros that this is what happens when I let the Mexican out.

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Jozer Guerrero is a Denver-based spoken word artist, actor at the Radical Arts Agency, and poet at Art From Ashes. He ranked 4th in the 2013 Individual World Poetry Slam.

Video courtesy of Button Poetry. For more amazing spoken word performances, check them out on YouTube and Facebook.