The Perfect Response to ‘I Don’t See Color’

Marshall Gillson: Tell me again how you don’t see color.

Tell me how you treat everyone the same, that we’re all just skeleton shaped coat hangers.

Tell me that we’re all just people.

Tell me that you’ve figured it out, unwound this know, cracked this cipher.

You haven’t, but tell me that you don’t need to talk about it.

Tell me that you’re on my side.

Tell me that this is not a yoke, that you don’t shrug away the corpses of black children.

Tell me that justice is the same as amnesia, that we are not flowers wilting on this country’s mantel.

Tell me that our skin is not crime scene photographed. If we are lucky, we will die on our own before it develops.

Tell me you don’t see it in color.

Tell me that I don’t see reflections of my grandmother, my sister, myself in this looking glass holocaust every day.

Tell me it doesn’t matter, that you treat everyone the same. I’m so tired of death feeling personal, of preparing myself to be an unheralded victim.

Tell me again how you don’t see color.

Tell me how it feels to look at the world, and see nothing but white.

Speaker 2: That was Marshall, judges.