Abhijit Naskar's Blog - Posts Tagged "marginalized"

Mind is one big lie,
unless you examine everything.
Life is one big blind spot,
unless you question everything.

All prejudice comes with a flag,
all discrimination comes with a badge.
Nothing civilized in waving the flag,
real honor is to outgrow archaic trash.

If you must wave, wave the flag of those
who are stripped of their life and dignity.
Wave the rainbow, wave the watermelon –
lift up those thrown in manufactured obscurity.

If left to tradition, every mind
is a septic tank of superstition.
But nourish it with heart and reason,
and mind is sanctuary of illumination.

I never play the victim card,
because to play the victim one would
have to feel inferior somehow – which I don’t –
I am not inferior to anyone, quite the contrary,

I am one of the most spectacular specimens
of whole human that ever walked the earth –
which is why, whenever I face derogatory remarks,
my immediate response is not that of an offended
minority, but that of a concerned parent
disappointed at their child’s misdemeanor.

I don’t beg for equality, I establish equality.
I don’t plea for mercy, I execute justice.
Millennia yet for courts to catch up to my truth;
I don’t outsource, I am the source of holiness.

The average colored person is ten times
smarter, wiser, braver, and stronger,
than most white people, not because
we are genetically superior,

but because, when an entire planet
is rigged in favor of white colonials
over the black, the brown, the latino,
arab, indian, chinese, turk, and what not,
we have to be exceptional to survive.

White people can be mediocre,
and still respected, glorified even,
but rest of us have to be Ramanujans,
Rumis, Naskars, just to be regarded as human.

Most of the world’s geniuses are non-whites,
not because it’s genetic, but because, like
white people inherit blonde hair and blue eyes,
or daddy’s emeralds, we inherit generational
persecution, and any brain forced to endure
persecution as daily chore, becomes a powerhouse
of apparently supernatural mental faculties.

When the whites benefit from privilege,
it’s part and parcel of colonial heritage,
but when a giant rises from the marginals,
it eclipses the shallow heights of whiteness.

I’m colored, I’m scientist,
I’m poet, I’m polyglot –
coming from zero money,
I won the world with words.

Try and get your puny white brains
around this existence enigma –
compile your white canons of a century,
and they turn bleak next to just one year
of multicultural, multidisciplinary Naskar.

I never grovelled to be included,
I let my vastness out,
and the world queues for my grace.