The Face of Race

16 silhouettes shape a narrative

Every ethnicity. Every injustice. The storied wingspan of race relations.

Image by Jeferson Gomes.

Nevada - Tina Leavitt

Nevada used to be called the Mississippi of the west…

I am not sure what to say about racism being a white girl who grew up sheltered in the Sacramento suburbs…

A few years ago, I went to Carson City
to soak in the natural hot springs

The high desert
scent of sage brush lingering the air
dirt being kicked up as you walk
seeing wild horses running across Washoe Valley under snowcapped mountains
soaking in the geothermal heated water

Real cowboy shit

I felt uneasy but I always do, being heavily tattooed with red hair
when I told a coworker about the hot springs
she expressed excitement about going by herself someday
I wanted to say don’t go alone, bring someone white with you…

What the fuck, Tina?

In 2023, the sundown alarm in Minden, Nevada
was silenced
for good
for now…

There are people still angry
the alarm can’t scream every day the way they want to scream
at six pm
as the sun sets in the winter
as the desert heat languishes in the summer

Is this still real cowboy shit?

How uneasy it is to live in this world
to be othered
moving in life
with strangers breathing down your neck
with stranger’s angry eyes watching you
with strangers holding your mouth shut

After the hot springs, my friend and I went to an antique store
the store was dark and cramped
I went into a small room and
walked straight into a minstrel show
so many racist figurines
crowded into a room

The uneasy feeling washes over you
the sour feeling your throat gets when you’re about to vomit
everyone in the store was white
either no one saw or no one cared
or both

I didn’t say anything
I didn’t do anything…

Why sell this? You know who
who would buy this? You know who

How uneasy it is to live in this world
moving in life
being reminded you don’t belong
your every movement a standoff

Real cowboy shit

© Tina Leavitt (Ginger Ghost Poetry) 2025

Image by Ivan Siarbolin.

To Be - Jeremy Marks

The lone prairie where sewers hiss beneath hydrants and median
planted to stem concrete. Serpents slither up hydro poles offering
pommes de terre in sneaker form and plants you can roast as an
appetite suppressant. Beware pavement that pulls apart wishbones
refusing to share either arm. You can’t trade loose teeth for cash.
 
Brick walls cause piles, so come home if you can. No one will ask
you anything other than where have you been, and often not even that.
Settler’s choice. Purchase new clothes. Shave and bathe alone. Hot water
isn’t on a timer. You won’t have to compete with copper wires for personal
attention. Health insurance covers your prescriptions.
 
I am a tall white man who, with a car and a pair of binoculars, goes looking for
meadowlarks. I hear there’s oil out here. I don’t get stopped. The soil doesn’t
seize my wristwatch. A bus with a bail bondsman’s brand on its ass sashays when
it sees me. Noon darkens with pigeons and ants. Young women disappear. Sometimes
they appear on film, otherwise they are known as agents of their own demise.
 
No one asks questions.

© Jeremy Marks 2025

Image by Jacob.

Dark Chocolat 3 - Edward Swafford

Kowtow lowbrow high-heeled decamping licks the pavement in staggered strides, she’s footing curbs with a hapax hop, step, and a fucking JUMP.

Blue and red. Blue and red. Blue and red signal inevitability.

Icy air imparts a tautness to her skin, the night blends it, binds it, only betrayed by shoots of light ricocheting from faux-safety-outside streetlights.

How many of similar fashioned color have receded down these same lanes? Too many.

Scurrying and trenchcoated, the lacy RACY race-cum-sans-reward outfit of an ivory bra and panties = just another hoe from one of the ghettoed strip clubs lining her patriarchal start in life.

First comes the scudding sound of one loaded gun firing into her ether. It misses. Not by much.

Maim first, ask questions later.

Sirens as loud as hypocrisy drown her five free senses - SO SHE FALLS. And waits. Waiting.

Men clad in royal blue circle her shivering body, laying claim to the asphalt like a martyr of compunction. Glocks meet her eyes as she stares into left and right arms of “the law.”

“We think we have the right one, she fits the description. She’s holding a knife, we have no choice.”

© Edward Swafford 2025

Image by Nadezhda Diskant.

“What Are You?” - Lee Summers

"What are you? Roots?"
Let me tell you
The histories
That predate me:

Many years before
Dad and Mom met,
Ancestors stepped
On stolen sands:

Lukku-Cairi
Now just traces
In names like 'Key'
From Taino.

Caddo Táy:sha'
Pushed from their home,
Changed to Texas
By Moms' forebears.

Soon colonial tongues bore names
Bent in bloody hypo-descent
For people born to my station
I was fortunate to not hear:
Spanish would call me cuarterón,
Which the English soon after stole,
Pirated with shifted vowels
To the caste epithet 'quadroon.'

One day faces kind of like mine
Would shock Harper's Weekly readers:
Chiaroscuro propaganda
Woodcut from 1864
Detailed emancipated slaves
Both paler and darker than me,
Imploring a war-torn public's
Similarity sympathy.

But really I'm realization
Incarnate of the Supreme Court
Case Loving versus Virginia:
A unanimous decision
Allowed a Bahamian man
To marry a Texan woman
And raise—then tear—a family
In this decaying colony.

"What are you, thing?"
Let me tell you
With the objects
That cling to me:

The tangerines
Near Nanna's pool
In her backyard
Outside Nassau,

The pecan pies
Mom taught herself,
Since my Granny
Burnt everything,

The airplane flights
That came and went
To tie both trees
And cut them free,

The dialects and creoles shown
Only in phone conversations,
Glitchy Skype communications,
Snippets of holiday visits
With relatives who exiled us
For Mom's cardinal sin: voting
To not stomp on people like her
"Off-white" children: my sis and me.

"What are you, boy?"
Some burnt stranger
Asked me from his
Rusty red truck.

A collection
Of body parts
That confound him
And shift in time:

The baby blues
That age has changed
To something not
Quite like Mom's green,

But certainly 
Not the deep brown
Of my father
Or my sister,

Ambiguous,
Blending in light
Of whatever
Terms you affix.

The inevitable sunburn
Blushing Mom's freckles on Dad's nose
As the waxing of each summer
Charts the wane of my mousy waves
And golden curls to solid brown,
Which, like my parents shaped their tongues
To dress what came out of my mouth,
I tried many techniques to "tame."

"What are you, man?"
They jump to this
Before they ask
"Who are you?" Huh.

There's quite a bit
I've had to hide
When the answer
Means "peace" or strife,

When honesty
Many have met
With disbelief
Or suspicion,

Labels become
Entrance exams
To see if I
Pass in/Fail out.

Maybe I'm the college baby
Gay who ran an experiment
To see what kind of men invite
Themselves to ask me such questions
When I edited my profile
Between white and more than one race,
How often cloudy eyes earned praise
Over other parts I'd market.

"What are you, huh?"
Well, who are you
And why should I
Reify that?

Are you the news
Who interviewed
My friend and I
As if our light

Complexions gave
A guiding light
For "folks at home"
To comprehend

That maybe they
Should give a shit
About humans
Different from us?

You shouldn't need Harper's Weekly,
National Geographic eyes
to realize how such a question
Carries the dreadful spell to change
Someone, once complex, to something,
Into tourist commodities,
Make simple tales of history
To buy over other voices.

© Lee Summers 2025

Image by BULE.

Ground Water - Samantha Lazar

It’s just the house rules
‘Big, beautiful budget bill’
Where wishlists become law
With no restriction on authority
Officials who violate
Courts who violate
Judges who abuse
Their power, who disregard
The immigrants who make this country

Now those laws
Meaningless
Ignored

The center:
Indeed money
Benefits the wealthy
Americans in the lowest tenth of earners

Lose

A hit on health
And food

Take and take and take from the poor
And give to the rich
And you say the United States has changed
The debate is steeper
How can we push it
Possible

This is no new vision
This is a ‘Great Society’
For making money
Fake promises
For every child to learn and grow
To elevate every life

Where is this harbor
Where is the hunger
For community
race is a social construct
for the building of a nation
people selling people
a fabrication
to justify
oppression in the wells we dig
to justify
the septic system

sewing the fabric of white history
false narratives birthing amnesia
and privileged numbness
but the seams of this story
will not hold
another generation
like the roar of high tide
ground water
will no more
disguise fear as power
we all drink from the same cup

© Samantha Lazar 2025

Image by M. Pxio.

Check-Marked to Death - River’s Writings

I levitate between worlds,
belonging in mystical lands,
“go back to your country”
I’ve heard it once or twice,
“function like a normal being”
no matter how many times
I try,
I can’t

They try to solve the mystery of my mind,
play puzzles with my heart,
rearrange my life to fit the frames of normal

Maybe that’s why
I search familiar places for answers,
but find rules that never fit

There’s an endless checklist
society uses
to gatekeep
humanity

I can never win

My body, my mind,
pressed into a rigid frame
mapped for the appropriate mask,
the twisted, dark reality of my existence
has no place within the borders of
a deserving human being

My identity, my sexuality,
up for debate,
tear me apart,
just so you could
reshape me
to fit inside
your narrow mind

Who made these rules?
Who gave you the right
to weigh
my worth,
my rights,
on a scale you built?

Check-marked to death,
just so you could
judge
and crown yourself
right

This is the reality
on the podium of judgment

Make me bleed,
call it a win,
just so you can stand taller
above the ashes of me,
but you’ll never be able
to erase
my worth, my fire, my truth

© River’s Writings 2025

Image of author.

My Gentle Brush with Racism - Sue Banerji

My gentle brush with racism, that too in a restaurant, will never leave my conscience. At least this one I remembered well. Mostly, I have pushed it under the rug so I could go on with my life. The late 70's in some parts of the Southern USA were challenging. Frequently safe- when you traveled with white friends. Yet, at that time, this distinction was not so loud. We didn't think about such things.

The lines drawn by distinction of color, race, class, and religion were supposed to be weakening, at least I believed that. Sadly, those lines were tarred, etched, viscous, and almost morphing into scary, unrecognizable monsters in certain regions.
Racism was present, yet most of us knew that hordes of good, nameless people from all walks of life fought to improve them constantly.

“Racism is so universal in this country, so widespread, and deep-seated, that it is invisible because it is so normal.” ― Shirley Chisholm, Unbought and Unbossed

Once upon a time, we lived in N. Georgia and drove through places like Virginia and Alabama and Mississippi on our way to other states. Some People looked at us funny like who the fuck are you and I smiled back muttering under my breath...exactly who you think we are- "humans".

Then a visit to a restaurant on one of many of our road trips, which shall remain unnamed to prevent them from gaining more publicity, gave me a real glimpse of how blatant things could be.

We were traveling to Florida with 5 people in our beat up Duster-Plymouth-year unknown. On our way, we decided to take a break and instead of our usual McD's, my multi-colored friends and my husband decided to have a sit down lunch while I parked the car and stayed out at the entrance to finish my cigarette.

A waitress came by to share the space and had this quizzical look on her face while staring at me hard. Not the look...where have I seen you before? But a pugnacious look. So rude that I felt the laser beams piercing my body.

The first few words were not too bad: " Good lord, you have hair like Crystal Gale." I smiled because I knew who Crystal Gale was!

And then after taking a few tokes, she blurted out, "Never seen them folks like you guys here before. " Chewing each word and spitting them out dry.

My quick response was: "There is a first time for everything".
Though, that's not what I wanted to say. I usually am not a confrontational person. I try to let people win the arguments, even when I know they are wrong. Because their happiness and peace is always more important than mine!

However, it was too late. Elvis had left the building...I felt my heart throbbing in my mouth. Never felt such a strong rush of blood in my head ever.
What was I thinking? I could have ignored it completely!
What now? She gawked again, but silently. She didn't frown but did mutter something inaudible! We both finished our cigarettes and returned to our next task.

Inside the restaurant, our orders were taken after almost 45 minutes. We were served water with a butter pack floating on top. We had to ask for ketchup, napkins, and cutlery. Our African American friend got his lunch much later than the rest of us. Although his meal was the same as my husband's. We fished out butter, ordered food, and ate lunch in an environment that could be labeled hostile. Almost militant if you consider the guns concealed in a few hip holsters!

We will never find out if there was any pubic hair or spit in our lunch that day, or any other gross material, if at all. Yet, most of us voted to leave a good tip for the brave waitress. We counted our blessings that we came alive with all parts intact and the car still parked where it was.

We left them to their world where we should not exist. We went our way, knowing that they existed in the world.

Both my Jewish friends and one African American friend burst out laughing when they saw that my hands were trembling with fear of what could have happened. They said...this was nothing compared to what their experiences have been!

And then I, the naive one who believed all is well in the world, remembered all the civil war stories, and of course, Mississippi Burning!

© Sue Banerji 2025

The colorless bouquet…

Of sympathetic bullshit?

Image by Cottonbro Studio.

Yeah, but, where are you from, from? - H. R. Sinclair

That boy will go to school today,
and his friends will make fun of his lips,
and the girls will want to touch his hair,
and that teacher might be a little meaner to him.
But his mates are just joking,
and the girls must like him,
and that teacher treats them all the same.

That woman is going to work today,
and her boss is going to look down on her,
and her coworker is going to say she’s sensitive,
and that blonde one in HR will mispronounce her name.
But her boss is her boss so she must have done something wrong,
and her coworkers right, she’s surely too sensitive,
and that blonde one’s only known her six months.

That man will go online today,
and he’ll see another comment about his nose,
and he’ll see another meme about his culture,
and he’ll see another video about his president, or vice, or whatever that other guy is or whatever Ye is
and he’ll see another Sieg Heil in broad daylight.
But those comments are just trolls,
and those memes are just jokes,
and his president can’t be too bad, and his vice is who again? is it that other guy
sending out his love with his hand straight-high on stage or that other guy wearing a diamond chain,
and those salutes are in other countries (apart from that one) that we know of?

That girl will go about her day today,
and she’ll see those other girls stare,
and she’ll hear the politicians blame her for poverty,
and she’ll ignore that man’s command to go back to her country.
But those girls stare because she’s different,
and they need someone to blame but themselves,
and that man’s just drunk on a tuesday—
how could he know this was her country.

Why would he think for a moment
who benefits from his hatred?
Why would anyone question
who enforces their bigotry,
who’s building between the divide,
and what’s their agenda?

That’s too many questions,
and not enough answers,
and the worlds confusing,
and they give easy targets,
and they point at who’s at fault
and the anger gets a home,
and the racist doesn’t have to think,
and the ones raised by those
raised in other times,
and the ones at home
glued to the news or facebook reels,
and the ones with something to gain,
or nothing to lose,
and the ones with delusions in their head
and hate in their hearts,
and the few who vocalise,
the some who subtly slip and the many that mistakenly make remarks,
will keep it alive…

you may not know it,
are you breathing it life?

© H. R. Sinclair 2025

Image by Pitt Rom.

White Girl Raised - Laura Catanzano

Idealistic, utopian, green
I stepped off the plane pursuit of something higher Tech school over Ruston Streets filled with riotous applause
in honor of our alma mater as giant cockroaches jumped to their end, bodies
cracking on the sidewalks. Crawfish boils and boiling
humidity, more than a touch of
systemic segregation.
White girl raised, quintessential
New England with her head buried under studies of sociology, American history, racism read in text.
I thought I set out to change the world,
the world doesn't change much in Louisiana. Gators in the pond, 40s in paper bags Bible belt boulevards
and drive through liquor stores.
Black and white lines
etched deep between Jim
Crow neighborhoods and no one
seems to notice or care that
the white boys' frats hang
flags of the confederacy.
No one seems to notice or care that
other things once hung here, too.

© Laura Catanzano 2025

Image by Rube G.

JOHANNESBURG 1968 - Steve Elliot

Can you remember
the fiery plumes and vivid blooms
of those southern gardens,
aquamarine pools shimmering
on water-thirsting lawns?

Can you remember
the gold mines and limousines,
the stink of money,
and the jacaranda-lined drive
where we’d sit at five?

Can you remember
our guilt over the filth
and suffering in sad Soweto,
reeling away, not speaking,
in retreat from the unspeakable?

Can you remember
the scarred faces, native fear,
the corrosive hatred,
the Bantu trampled
under a fascist boot?

© Steve Elliot 2025

Image by murat esibatir.

Noah’s Ark - Melanie Cole

There was no Noah
and there was no Ark

and oppression surged
in one August morning

in 2005. We all bore
witness as the Lower

Ninth Ward flooded
under twelve feet of

water. A levee breach
caused the damage to

homes, lives, and livelihoods.
But it wasn’t worth

saving, was it? It
was Black Americans

trapped in those flood
waters, trapped in

a city that is sinking
below sea level,

trapped on rooftops,
trapped on top of vehicles,

trapped. Devastation
doesn’t matter when your

skin is brown. You’re a
looter when you try

to get some bottled water
and a loaf of bread. Like

taking communion for
survival. No one

built that floodwall
up. No government

entities approved plans
to improve it. So it

cracked, it broke, it fell.
and oppression leaves

Black and Brown
Americans swimming

in dirty floodwaters
without hope of
rescue.

© Melanie Cole 2025

Image by Cottonbro Studio.

“Ain’t Gotta Explain Us” - Dondi Springer

They see me
and don’t see her.
Or they see her
and don’t believe me.
Like my skin and her skin
ain’t allowed to hold hands
without a history lesson.

Say I sold out.
Say she playing dress-up.
Say “how can she really get it?”

But she the one
who pulled me out my silence
on nights I choked on it.
The one who learned the names
of the boys that never came home
and said ‘em out loud
when I couldn’t.

She don’t flinch
when the world calls me threat.
She flinch
when I flinch
when the cop car slows
or the clerk follows me too long
or the news forgets another body.

She ain’t tryin’ to speak for me.
She just ain’t afraid
to speak with me.

See, this love ain’t permission.
It’s protest.
It’s picking a fight with every room
that needs us to explain
what the hell we doin’ together.

But I ain’t gotta explain us.

Not to the unseasoned,
not to the loud-whisperin’ uncles,
not to the sisters who think I stepped over the line
like I ain’t got room in me
for love and loyalty.

Truth is
her skin don’t disqualify her from the war
if she show up armed
and never aims at me.

She ain’t Black.
But she back me.
Fully. Loudly.
When it costs.

And that?
That’s love
the world ain’t ready for.

© Dondi Springer 2025

Image by Tima Miroshnichenko.

Love / Divided - Pixel Floyd

Binary bastions bind the blood
to black and white
veneers
of
simplicity
splitting
love
in a phobic
push or
shove.

© Pixel Floyd 2025

Image by Willy Méndez.

The Swell - Maarten Bleijerveld

I am not sure how to move this all in my mind,
My body and soul.
What’s the shape of the happening——

There is no clear sight down the mist
I can only guess the ahead one step at the time.
Anger and fear are battling for the place ahead of the train
of thought.
That has gained the momentum of no regret
as it boulders through, plowing everything in its way.
Why control makes the waves bigger, where is the logic of pounding the door, when it will not open. Riding waves is voluntary drowning as swimming won’t do a damn!
With this train still relentlessly going…
where to and why?
Pulling in the direction of destruction, end of life.
A pulling going no matter; you try
directing like it’s a movie with no
to no avail, that train’s running - the waves pulling you down; oblivion.
Resistance only tightening the strings: locking in. Making it a straight, dry-boned horrible trip down the galley of destruction.

-Help-
No control

Choice is an empty promise to the lane of temptation and cruel doubt.
Knowing you lost; the first victory. A liberation,
body is moving; mind free
Train slowing, waves, it can get ugly
Always ending..

© Maarten Bleijerveld 2025

Image by Adefemi Adedoyin.

American Malice - Andy Edge

Ghetto walls built from banker's ink
Not brick but POLICY
Not accident but INTENT
Not chance but HATRED
Steel tracks SLASHING through lives
Maps drawing borders of sacrifice
Every bridge, every zone, every line
A NOOSE TIGHTENING

Statistics carved in gravestones
Life expectancy MAPPED by ZIP CODE
Opportunity MEASURED in melanin
Centuries of theft
REBRANDED as laziness
Your children's hunger?
PLANNED
Your crumbling schools?
DESIGNED
Your poisoned water?
ENGINEERED
Your blocked path?
INTENTIONAL
Your denied loan?
PROCEDURAL
Your rejected application?
SYSTEMATIC

THEY KNEW
They've always known

White hands signing death warrants
In boardrooms far from screams
Creating poverty like art
SEGREGATION is their MASTERPIECE
BLOOD money
BLOOD borders
BLOOD policy
American apartheid in concrete form

Prisons rising where schools should stand
The NEW PLANTATION system
Different century
SAME DESIGN
Different chains

SAME PURPOSE
Not neglect
SUFFOCATION
Not urban decay
MURDER

The foundation
Mortared with myths
Of meritocracy and fairness
While the ARCHITECTS of oppression
Hide behind closed doors
And legislation language
Still drawing maps
Of who will live
And who will die
Who will thrive
And who will merely survive

The ghetto HOWLS
With every boarded window
Every rat-infested apartment
Every child playing in toxic dirt
Every generation inheriting wounds

AMERICA BUILT THE KILLING FLOORS
Then blamed the bodies
For bleeding too loudly

© Andy Edge 2025

Image by Kazys Photography.

Maid Service 6/20/1953 - Zenita M. Belle

Negroes to the back and
Roberta holds her head high as she
finds an empty seat, exhausted.

© Zenita M. Belle 2025

Inked skin of bigotry doesn’t have to last forever.

*Video embeds courtesy of Cottonbro Studio (first two) & Ivan Samkov