The Mirror Poem by Elia Michael

A mirror dares say to me
As it catches me unawares
You are not quite white!
Shocked I leave hurriedly

How rude! - What audacity!
But my mirrored self
Makes me wonder
Do I really want to be white?

Perhaps it's better now
But in my day
If you weren't completely white
You didn't have much say

At primary school
Daily daily daily
Blackie! Blackie! Blackie!
It wasn't very cool

It wasn't at all right
But not as bad
For me at least

As in South Africa or even the States
Where they were violent and quite mad
Perverting laws of nature God and man
To legitimise their base bigotries
Their racially segregated policies
Their inhuman deeds, their vile hate


Blackie! Blackie! Blackie!
It was bad not to be white
This is my shameful story
I just wanted it to be all right

So I began acting white
My cultural inheritance
I put away at a great distance
Now inside me I was white

To fit in I had to be a new me
Everything was nearly right
But I had lost my psyche
In becoming this good white

Year upon year
Of being drilled
You are not quite white
The odd look the odd stare

Now I am a little more old
Now I am a little more bold
Attitudes a little better
Thanks in part to Martin Luther

But can it be right
That a young lad
Is murdered at a bus stop
For no other reason than
His colour -
Because he is not white?

- Now it begins

A lifelong labour
An odyssey in culture
In language - a journey of pride
My history and my self to discover

But prejudices are stubborn
This internalised bigotry
Lives deep inside me
Clinging like a biblical demon

Mirror mirror catch me unawares
Please keep telling me
You are not quite white!
Until I accept what I see


Till I no longer want to be white
Till I exorcise my parasitic preconceptions
Till I exercise no longer in self-deceptions
Till everything really is all right