The Child Celebrates Privilege by Eating Cake
Whiteness walks along the smooth sidewalk to her local
bakery. What else can she, at this time of crisis, do
but indulge in the matters of the self— stay home,
put a flag on it, stuff a fork into it for everyone to see, eat
and comment about racism with a mouthful of cake.
The child celebrates her privilege by eating cake, finding
some action that keeps her intact, keeps her finding
comedy—privilege of her whiteness, the locale
that keeps her mothers unhung from trees, serves her cake.
What is a joke to one is not a joke to everyone else. Whiteness does
what it does best, celebrates racism by eating
what no one else has while none of us stay home.
If you’re creative effort is a maybe satire telling people to stay home
and eat what people of color work for, then find
the nearest exit of this contemporary history, this movement, eat
your cake along with your ineffective writing, locate
your center, your escapism, your “I see color but I make bad jokes instead of doing
what people of color have no choice but to do, have your cake
and your privilege out of our sight. Eat what you call cake
what I am calling the privilege of weakness, do
choke on the cake one evening, when you have stayed home
alone. You need to feel what it is to run out of breath, to find
no one when all you’re doing is trying to eat, to locate
something in this nation feeds you. It is not comedy when one person can eat
cake next to a black man on a stage, grub
on cake while what is happening eats everyone watching alive, eats
the tiny bit of tolerance we have left but it does not taste like cake.
A child celebrates privilege by eating cake. A child asks the tired to walk to their local
bakery and buy a cake made by a person of color because they cannot afford to stay home
they have to make the dough, the frosting, sweep the floors count the change, find
a way to make it through another day so you can say you helped. Whiteness, do
please stop taking from us what you’ve made us create to survive you and calling
it activism or even humanity. Whiteness, white comedians, NBC, Tina Fey, do
please stop finding ways to have your cake and eat
it too. Don’t go to the bakery. Read a history book. Write better. Find
the privilege you’ve inherited and do not celebrate it with cake.
If you can’t do that, then yes, stay home.
Stay on your block in your home close your mouth. Locate
something better to say then this. The child finds cake in privilege, does
the unimaginable. Go to your center, locate you conscious, don’t eat
anything, for once. Don’t buy cake. Don’t stay home.
Sara Borjas is a Fresno poet and third-generation Chicana. She is a Community of Writers at Squaw Valley Workshop Fellow and a 2017 CantoMundo Fellow. She received the 2015 Blue Mesa Poetry Prize for her poem, “Half-Elegy for My Mother’s Voice.” She digs space & time, memory, aromatics, tiny prints and oldiez. Her most recent poetry can be found in The Offbeat, Calamity, The Acentos Review and Luna Luna. She is a lecturer in the Creative Writing Department at UC Riverside.
