Congratulations!
Welcome
to UW.
Please do not
check your
privilege
at the door.

SOAR
freshman year
words like diversity,
inclusion,
happy…
cause I was sick
of birks
and plaid skirts

Catholic high school
all white
Coach leather bags
upturned noses
Who felt so small
they had to call
the only known
gay guy a fag.

Before high school
went to middle…
where kids bussed in
from the south side of chicago
others from the rich
part of town
felt like the real world…
to me, beyond the color
of my skin

UW was supposed
to put me back
in the middle…
Growing up
I never felt like I had culture
when people asked my race
I rattled off
Part Irish
Part French
Part German
Then part Russian? Or Ukrainian? Or Russian?
Until I got red in the face

I didn’t know.
But what I did know
was apple pie.

My mom made it
every Christmas.

What I did know
was eating dinners as a family
every weekday.

What I did know
was sunday conversation
talking about
Dancing with the Stars
Jennifer Aniston
high school gossip,
but after the pie was gone…
we never answered the question
of whether we were
Russian or Ukrainian

Because we didn’t need to.
We didn’t need to know
Where we came from
Whereas others
Made cultural dishes
As an anchor point
As empowerment
As this is where we came from
And we should be damn proud of it.

But not us.
We didn’t need to know
where we came from.
We could just talk
and eat
that God damn pie.

So, it went from family dinners
to dinners in the dorms
I remember sitting
eating french fries
with my friends
dreaming of a space that felt
rooted in something
deeper than..
spray tans
or pie.

I thought Madison might be different
till I got my roommate assignment
white
middle class
liberal
straight
cis-gender
she was the type
to keep our door open
her drawers
without locks,
left her laptop
on the desk.

She was the type
that couldn’t talk
past the pie.

There was really
nothing for us to learn
about that big world out there
Just clones trying to
get something different
from their double.

The real Madison
Crops people of color
Into college ads
To make it seem like
we’ve got cultural infusion

I wish I could say
Madison brought me
back to that middle…
school
eyes open..
But I can’t.

 

Instead, I’ve learned
The costs of this
white
black
binary.

Racism doesn’t just hurt
people of color.

It normalizes whiteness
to the point
where you become
generic
stale
ubiquitous
swallowed whole
to the point where
I don’t even know
if I’m Russian or Ukrainian.

Where I don’t feel rooted
in anything
because I don’t know where I’m from.

Because where I’m from
we don’t look past the pie

They call it
white
because it erases.

Erases
difference.

Erases
nonconformity.

Because it refuses
to acknowledge
that which it is not.

It is apple pie.
But I refuse to let this pie define me.