Yanquis

Why don’t we ask white Puerto Ricans how they know if they’re white?

Why don’t we ask them to unpack their whiteness and what it means to them

Why don’t we question a white Puerto Rican who says “but I’m not white”

Why do we question a Black Puerto Rican who says “but I’m Puerto Rican”

Why don’t we ask Puerto Ricans about how their racial identity is tied to colonialism 

Why don’t we ask Puerto Ricans about their skin color period

Why is the only time we question it is when a Black Puerto Rican starts speaking Spanish 

Why don’t we keep that same energy for the white Puerto Rican spewing supremacist ideas

Why don’t we question how whole neighborhoods in Puerto Rico are Black and poor

Why don’t we question the white Puerto Ricans who push for charter schools instead of funding el pueblo 

Why don’t we question why the government passes tax incentives for white outsiders and not for the Puerto Ricans who live there

Why do you get so caught up in my generalizations and not on the fact that working class Puerto Ricans will soon have no home

I know why

Cause the Yanquis do things the right way, I mean the white way

Cause the Yanquis had to domesticate a whole people, keep the savages docile

Cause the Yanquis just extract extract and extract without giving anything back

The only thing they give us is self loathing

The only thing they give is blame

The only thing they give is sickness

The only thing this give is pain, and suffering, and cancer, and infertility, and illiteracy, and war 

Pennies on the dollar for land that’s ours to begin with if they give us pennies at all

And to be honest we don’t want your pennies, 

Don’t want your dollars, your immorality, your inhumanity, your ignorance, your systems, your individualism, your lifestyle, you Tio Sam. 

We don’t want you.