04 Sep This Year We’ll Try Color
This Year We’ll Try Color
by Christian Hanz Lozada
Back to school sales are new year’s resolutions for the young and the nerds,
between each item on the shopping list, read: this time will be different
and check off the supplies in your cart, the color-coded tabs and folders
that make recognition easy and quick and will prevent the loss of essays
and math problems; never mind the Bango Tags your imported ancestors
carried to prove their identity on pay day and their worth for credit;
never mind, like single-subject notebooks, the metal and shape were chosen
to distinguish the differences in all the Asians and Pacific Islanders skins
that untrained eyes could not see; never mind the plantation owners paying
for just bodies to cut the cane but used a color-coded system to pay lighter skinned
ones a bit more as if degreed burns under the sun deserves degreed rewards;
never mind losing a hexagonal tag meant you were no longer a Japanese work,
losing a numbered, brass tag meant you were no longer a Filipino worker,
losing a tin circle meant you were no longer a Chinese worker, you were just
Japanese, Filipino, Chinese and worth nothing without that color-coded tab;
never mind that that is not you, that that was not your father or uncles;
just focus on how, this year, you’re going to try a new highlighter: pink
for main ideas, yellow for support, and a box of Bic
black pens for everything else.
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