Wednesday, August 16, 2017

The real racists (from Confessions of a Racist, a satire)



Don’t talk too loudly,
You must be a racist
The only people brave enough
To speak their minds
These days are racists,
Because they don’t care
What people call them,
The deluded do not
Know they are deluded
But always think
They are right
And so keep still
Or you might be called
A racist
Even when you’re not,
Preachers and politicians
Who ought to know better
Keep silent
Too fearful they might
Get scarred with a scarlet letter,
Not so obvious as the Nazi numbers
Yet indelible,
Once a racist always a racist
Or so the saying goes
With us or against us
There is no in-between,
No room for mild voices
Lost in the rail of radical rhetoric
In this civil war
That was not our civil war
But we get dragged down anyway
Like old soldiers’ statues
Because we refuse to stay silent
And speak out against racism
Nobody sees  as racism,
So those who would call it what it is
Stay silent, intimidated
By radicals that have no shame
Mirroring the Nazis they blame
Attacking anyone who would
Call them what they really are.

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