Black, White, Brown… So What!

Black, White, Brown, Mixed…. So What!

Need I blow the vuvuzela?

To make you understand, my brothers and sisters

That a rainbow is a rainbow because of all its colours


I’ve been watching children play, watching them grow

They miss nothing and see everything

Everything but the colour of skin colour


Life in their eyes

Is like a big lollipop with eyes

Why can’t we all be children like?

Black, white, brown, mixed… so what!


Oh yes! I am aware of history

Aware of its ugly faces I am

Evil too, and its recycled phases breeding doom

But history just like the seasons transitions with time


There are times of winter, drought and famine

But just as sure as day will follow night, the rains will come

Times of plenty and plenty of sunshine

Black, white, brown, mixed… so what!


That fleeting illusion that Bob Marley sang about

That dream alluded to by Martin Luther King on the hill

That robbed Mandela’s freedom on Robben Island

Village pitted against village, Nation against Nation

That valley of human values, the trough beyond which we cannot fall

And claim to be human at all


That line has been crossed

And I for one am cross

To see such great work by such greats

Put to such great waste

Black, white, brown, mixed… so what!


Does it count?

That I count as the minority of the county

Why does my blackness or whiteness or brownness

Break the banks of their patience

They that are not gifted with colour blindness

That see not beauty deeper than skin pigment

Carry they excuses hollower than elephant tasks

That will not forgive the past


Their ignorance can be trusted to take more to the grave than flying bullets

And their hate to enslave more than binding chains

How better are they than cats and dogs?

That hate for the sake

How sad are we to feed of the hate bowl?

For goodness sakes

Black, white, brown, mixed… so what!

By Dumi Senda

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