A Former Immigrant Juvenile's Ambivalence and Confusion over Race and Color in America
*(This sonnet encapsulates and sums up my ambivalence and confusion over growing up in the South in America as a half-white, half-Vietnamese boy raised by an African-American, soldier step-father and a South Vietnamese mother during the 1970's era after emigrating from South Vietnam as the Vietnam War still raged on half a world away from us then.).During the '70's, deep in the South,
I was white but raised black by a black man.
As a boy, I have watched the Ku Klux Klan
on the news—and was frightened as a youth
who felt “black.” In those times, it was uncouth
and a mark of disgrace to be less than
the child of a white mother and white man:
even back then I knew that racist truth.
Two-score years have passed and I’m still confused,
troubled, and unclear as to what or how
I should be: am I white—or “black”? (Abused
by my step-dad, I identify with him now.).
It’s terrible being me. But scarred like this,
(and once raised as black) I now loathe prejudice.
Sonnet by Ngoc Nguyen
Read 987 times
Written on 2018-07-24 at 19:35
Tags Prejudice Racism America
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