Uneducated Assumption **You'll find this poem on my CD On Her Own
I am so over labels. I am so over people defining me, confining me, box me in, seal me up, packaged addressed and ready to bought by the consumer.
What is it with people trying to tell me who I am? Does it make you feel better or less threatened to know that you’ve lumped me into a category?
Check this box if you’re Black, White, gay, straight, American, Christian, terrorist, Buddhist, ghetto, racist, feminist, Arab, left or right wing, ugly, stupid, rich or poor, homeless or heartless.
And beware because the side effects include: nausea, diarrhea, mood disorder, conformity, genocide, idealism, abnormality and a slew of other adjectives that rape us of our individuality.
And isn’t that what its’ about? It meaning life. It meaning you and me?
Be you! Be free! Make love not war, peace not hate now wouldn’t that be great especially if you were selling it on a T-shirt?
But life is too short to categorized.
So what if I once was engaged to Jim then fell in love with Sue and three years later turned around and decided to do Enrique.
Am I gay or straight? Am I dammed or am I saved?
Okay what, I get it. You need definition. It’s you who are insecure. And maybe just maybe, if you stamp a label on me, nutritional value included, you’ll have a better grasp at you.
Shit I don’t know you. All I know is me.
I like cats, my favorite color is blue, when I was five I loved going down the slide, I suck at Math and occasionally I’ll go out for Chinese.
But that don’t make me a lion trainer, free falling blue faced Chinamen with hopes of an MBA from MIT now does it?
So why you pressed to mold me with the rest?
Yes I write. Yes I dance. Yes, believe it or not I am 100% Black so don’t ask if I got Indian in me cuz you think I got good hair.
Yes I was in love with a woman and yesterday my boyfriend made me breakfast in bed and I still suck at Math but I’m smart enough to know that your numbers don’t add up.
There is no expiration date on this one folks.
So generalize me in the simplest of terms.
My name.
That is the only label you need stick me with. And it’s Tiffani.
The rest you’ll learn once you remove those blinders and take an educated guess.
Tiffani C. Frost
Copyright 2004