Colony

Colony
Justine Camacho-Tajonera

We live in a vast, old
world. We think we know
enough to dream of launching
ourselves into the stars,
a collection of vast,
old worlds.

Our pioneer states
only exist in
our minds.

We conquer nothing
of what is already
there.

ModPo 2013 #33 Let Us Apply Some Whitening Lotion: On Cullen's "The Incident"

Image from Jhenny's blog, seller of whitening lotion.

Incident
BY COUNTEE CULLEN
(For Eric Walrond)

Once riding in old Baltimore,  
   Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,  
I saw a Baltimorean
   Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
   And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
   His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”

I saw the whole of Baltimore
   From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
   That’s all that I remember.

Countee Cullen, “Incident” from My Soul’s High Song: The Collected Writings of Countee Cullen. Copyrights held by the Amistad Research Center, Tulane University, administered by Thompson and Thompson, Brooklyn, NY.

Source: My Soul’s High Song: The Collected Writings of Countee Cullen (Anchor Books, 1991)

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This was very powerful. I disagree with some thoughts expressed in the video discussion that the word "nigger" was diminished by being part of a rhyme (bigger), that the power of the poem was reduced because of the sing-song nursery rhyme form. 

The nursery rhyme form calls attention to the innocence (and perhaps the start of the end of that innocence) of the speaker at the time of the incident. The form is a statement in itself. It is a statement about childhood, about the playfulness and fun that children ought to be afforded in any society. And there is that discordant word right in the middle which the child-speaker even rhymes, not yet judging, perhaps, that it is discordant. 

That single word is so disturbing that even a nursery rhyme in which it is nested cannot dull its impact. It has forever separated the speaker-child from the universal "children" and has identified him with an ugly name. 

You know what this reminds me of? This reminds me of little brown brother, a term of paternalistic racism applied to Filipinos. I don't know what's worse: to be given an outright derogatory and hate-inspired label like "nigger" or to be called "little brown brother" by a patronizing colonizer. Either way, they are politicized terms meant to show who is in the margins (and who is in power). 

And you know what is even sadder? Filipinos have adopted this inherited racism from the colonizer, privileging those who are fair (white) over those who are dark. Even today you will hear the term "negra/ negro" or "nognog" as insults referring to skin color (no matter how veiled in humor). Sales for whitening soaps and lotions in the Philippines alone will attest to this phenomenon. Imagine whole generations trying to rub and soap away the color of their skins. 

Imagining a Country

by Justine C. Tajonera

This country is imagined:
there are no real borders
that ring these seven thousand
islands together,
no color of blood
that follows our steady
diaspora.

This country is imagined:
our suffering is not anyone's
fault,
what filth or decay there is
has not been hoarded by
a few
but shared across all,
tolerated and perpetrated
like scum suspended
in the vast ocean
of our shared
air.

This country is imagined:
there is no real beginning
in a history of colonization
or layers of migration,
generations of mixed races
that have created a boiling
pot of pure
diversity.

But this country is imagined:
what great, exciting plot
unfurls from this
moment?

What unheard of
mystery is
at the center
of our shared
awakening?

There is no leaving
this country
as there is
no real
country
apart from
our
imagining.

In anticipation of the 2010 elections
(March 30, 2010)
Image from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Harper%27s_Pictorial_History_of_the_War_with_Spain_Vol._II_Philippine_map.jpg