Why does the colour of my skin matter in the grand scheme of things?

What am I in the grand scheme of things?

A Nguyen, like of my kin,

Or Asian because of my skin?

Should I need be ashamed of any of that

In the midst of the bashings and killings?

No, for my pride needs to be recognised

It runs far deeper than the colour of my skin

It’s something within me

What I’ve seen, where I’ve been

It’s my story, my history -it encompasses me

My difference is a cause for celebration

But I am no different to many

You just have to get to know me

Though who am I in this society?

Have I pride of the red star?

Or should I rejoice at the stars and stripes?

After all, they offered my family a new life

At school I was made to sing in front of a flag

It had another star, only white, smaller and more

Across a sea of blue and union jacks

But how can I commemorate

When I see another attack

The victims share my likeness, somehow

Another elderly, easily could be a relative

They’re all starting to notice now

But they should have cared way before COVID hit

I often wonder when this part of me

Will be freely accepted in the grand scheme of things?

We remain voiceless and unseen

We rarely see our kind on screen

There's more to us than Karate or Bruce Lee

Even he was treated unfairly,

So, what of me? What of us?

All they see is Mickey Rooney

Such mockery, how could we be taken seriously?

How could we go on with such history

We’re still waiting on justice

For the lynchings in the alley in the 1870s

Or what about the massacre at Rock Springs

The continual bludgeoning of Vincent Chin

And the injustice of his killers and the system

I could go on but I have to recover from the tears

Why is the colour of my skin so important in the grand scheme of things?

Will my children be subjected to the same things?

Microaggression, exclusion and oppression

Sexualisation and fetishization of our women

The emasculation of our men

What future have I, if I let colonialism rule my life

Enough with caricatures and the model minority myth

These all permeate my fabric, to great detriment

These are issues not minor, rather systemic and toxic

They are just as manufactured like your consent

Is it even worth mentioning the yellow peril?

Or my declaration that I am yellow and proud

I would only yearn to be white like the light that we see

Not the white declared right by decree

So where does my colour fit into the grand scheme of things?

I’d like to think I am defined more than by my pigment

But my kin, it keeps me grounded like the colours of the earth

Like the dirt that my father renews to plant our garden

It nourishes us, it lets me be

Does it matter if I consume,

Baked beans or greens?

Red meat or my fill of chlorophyll

A certain man in history preferred the latter

And still, he was a blueprint for monstrosity

I wonder what that means in the grand scheme of things?

Yet how will I appear in the grand scheme of things

Are colours true to the eye?

Or from where we stand, you decide

Just remember, I also float on the pale blue dot with you

We bleed the same colour too

I too am of a single origin

And one of many colours

Who finds themselves connected to everything

Of emotions, frustrations or even moods set forth in Blue in Green

I too like Al Green and Pink Floyd

I do not discriminate on types, genres or colours in this universe

I cry equally for The Colour Purple as I would the Killing Fields

And dreams I have too, to be free and to traverse

And still, the perception of me most crucial is a sophisticated construct

Who would have wondered that the beauty of colour could be exploited?

Shall geopolitical undertakings be voided?

Such a shame really, our understanding of relativity

In the grand scheme of things

My makeup just like yours is contingent on conditions

What says more about us, our goals, sexual orientations,

The colour of our skin, where we fall on the spectrum,

Where we fall on the political wing, the practice of our traditions?

Or what makes our heart sing?

Why not all of these things?

My reason for being

Defines me more than anything

And if I am to keep living

I must thrive and I must take pride in my kind

Or we'd be shadows, non-living

Only engraved still in Hiroshima

What next internment? Another dose of agent orange

We shall not be vaporised

Again, and again, with or without outpour

If I fail to speak of my pride

They shall call me foolish

And we may as well perish

And the colour of our skin and what we had been

Though our hopes, dreams, and experience

Would not have mattered. It would have been for nothing

In the grand scheme of things