The words of race, those words don’t belong to me.  They were not picked out specifically for me and I certainly did not ask for them by name.  I did not ask to be called by or addressed as black.  I would never introduce myself as such as this is not how I want to be seen.  But, somehow we have come to believe that the words of  race, racism, prejudice and stereotype fit everyone.  They seem to come in all sizes and social colors of skin.  We need no tailor or measurements.  We will make them fit and in turn, make persons submit to race.  We will make them believers, calling them black/ white/ red/ yellow/ brown/ beige until they answer and providing no community unless they join the one that racism has created.  It is a forced conversion.  But, I will not go along quietly.

Spoken centuries earlier, only God could have known that I would one day exist so he and she could not have had me in mind when they first said negro and later black and later still nigger.  The words of humanity have no eternal power or presence but are time sensitive and the time for these words have run out.  They were not talking to me so I will not answer.

They were handed down, tattered, torn, mere shreds of an identity not fit to be worn by anyone.  Spoken not out of love but misplaced hatred, these words were not meant to create anyone special.  They were said not to build up but to break down, not to emancipate but to enslave, not to reveal God’s greatness but to hide it, to cover it up, to bury it.  And I don’t want them.  I don’t want to hear them anymore not in my home, not in conversation, not in my head.  I am returning them to the sender.