They told me:
“Avoid trouble and the attitudes of brigands,
Pursue your studies like a decent child,
Think of the bitterness of heartbreaking arrests,
And find hobbies devoid of intoxicating white powder.
Extricate yourself from the stereotypes that target you,
If your pale skin essentializes you, deviate!
Take roads away from the suburbs, make serious friends,
Put on bourgeois soles, become docile and less fierce.
Repress your culture like a defector resurfaces far from his stock.
Decline respect and gratitude, make your life that of a good assimilator.
Be the wise kid among the scum, racialized!
Avalanche of undocumented migrants, unruly Africans.
Write stories where your home country is hated,
A blank sheet is already ready to admire your heresies,
Read between the lives then write your life differently from yours;
Flee the earthiness of their habits if your heart wants to become healthy. »
And when I hear the police sirens approaching proudly,
I cultivate silence and remain calm so that nothing interferes,
I seek peace and don’t want to aggravate the sealed outcome,
When between them and me there are prejudices to be erased.
If it is necessary to start again from the beginning I will redefine the rules of the game;
I’ll break the hate, change the doubtful feelings,
Strengthen empathy, for all to employ,
Will become a messenger of love so that every citizen will be king.
One day, one day, one day they will see, no more facies checks;
I would stay put and no longer suffer the worst baseness,
I’m going to brave injustice and not remain a victim there,
Waiting for me to pass away and go to the afterlife.
To die under hasty fire for being a man of color,
I’m not going to leave my neighborhood to play an honorary citizen,
I will live in estates, HLMs, ratholes;
I will empty them of their anger and make them leave all that behind.
I will demonstrate against this system and never give up the fight,
You don’t have to be blameless to belong to this state;
Nor clean criminal records to dodge the forces of law,
These people who strut around criminalizing strangers.
I dream of a rule of law where they would accost me without hitting me,
Because in these landscapes, I find it hard to seem like theirs,
In those transparent gazes that always judge me a culprit,
The zone is contempt, the rejection is obvious,
The right is an accomplice and I stumble in the wrong direction.