White Supremacists Playing the ‘Race Card’

By Ernie McCray

Occasionally
if I write something
along the lines
of, say, a little Mexican girl
curled up in her fears
of what’s happening
in her world
as she’s housed
in a cage,
or of a Black man
dying from
a racist policeman’s rage,
his knee on the brotha’s neck,
someone says
I’m playing the “race card’
and I agree
since, in America,
race cards
are the only cards in the deck.

But White America,
at large,
deals their race cards
shamelessly,
from the bottom of the deck
as one would expect
since their ancestors,
the discoverers
and the forefathers
and slave owners,
et al,
created the game –
in a way
that deals them
a hand
with more than their fair share
of aces and kings
and jacks and queens
and tens,
the cards
with which
one is most likely to win,
leaving those of us with darker skins
to fend
for ourselves,
to take the rotten hand
dealt to us
with no fuss
as our playing the race card
fills them with immense disgust.

But they play
their hand
with reckless abandon,
at random,
as the world came to see
when they tried to steal
the vote
after folks
of color
had worked tirelessly
to get out the vote,
storming
the U.S. Capitol Building
in Washington DC
while the people’s electees,
who took an oath
to defend the country’s principles
against “all enemies,”
no matter who they might be,
chose to pretend
it all was just
a “tea party,”
even though there wasn’t,
in the midst of all
the anarchy,
all the spraying and battering
and club swinging
and stun gunning
and smothering,
a single sighting
of anyone sipping
from cups
with pinky fingers up
and not as much
as a
quiche crumpet or savory scone
anywhere to be seen
in this scene.

But, alas,
all this will pass
as the White supremacists’
dream
of forever being
in the majority
is gradually
coming to an end
like the forces
in a dying wind.

Leading to a
future reality
wherein
the cards being played
are not race cards
but colorblind cards
that allow everyone a chance to win.