"What Race are You?"

The conquerors
came to my mother’s door,
kicked it in
and invited us
to accept Jesus
at the tip
of a sword.

What could she do?
They were on a quest,
a holy mission
guided by The Great Commission
and imperialist avarice.

Subjugate,
rinse,
and repeat.

With each new soul,
each hungry, crying mouth,
with every generation,
the original sin
was watered down,
until eventually
there were enough
mestizos
that they qualified
for their own
ethnic checkbox,
their own profile-able
category.

Fast forward
centuries and continents
later…
what is your race?

Father was
a Spanish rapist
a Christian murderer.

Mother was
a humble Indio,
a surviving stoic.

I am not half-White.
I am not half-Indigenous.

I am mixed
and troubled
by my father’s cruelty,
humbled
by my mother’s strength.

My blood is
impure,
and so is
my race.