I grow up in a sea of white.

Everything that has been passed down from me has been white

White cars are seen as rich while brown or black or seen as cheap

But when I accept the white surrounding I’m rejected by what has been given to me since birth

My white brothers and sisters, you have lived a life full of white like me

But when you try to be like me it's only for comedy

You live a race-free life because you don’t know what discrimination feels like

You may think that all I see is race and that’s my only objective but when you look at me all you see is my pigment

White-washed is a term not only to paint walls white but how you have painted our lives white

How we must relate to your lives because our lives are only our struggles but even then white is the right thing and color is the wrong thing

Isn’t it sad that I’m not even an adult yet and I accept that my place in America's history is not by being the president but by being the president's servant?

I will mow your green lawns and wash your white cars because that is what society has taught me

If I am to speak my mind, whenever I speak it's speaking like a white person and when I’m silent I’m speaking for a colored person

I want you to watch the news and tell me how many faces do you see that look like me?

I want you to write their names down and what the report is about and then come back to me

I will ask you how many people you saw that looked like me, and that will be hard unless you looked at a crime scene or a documentary about Cesar Chavez or a news report over immigration. Now take those out of the total number and what do you have left of me?

If you can count it on your hands then welcome to my world

I’m lucky enough to have to use someone else's hands to count my face on the news.

In a society that’s full of vastly different races, why do we only show one?

Why do you have to cover me in white as if my life is meaningless if I’m colored

Why must you shut me out and say that I’m stealing this land when you stole it first

I may be still young but my eyes are ancient.

They can see the past, present, and future and try to figure out a different course.

Those houses that are painted white will be a different color

Those people who have forgotten their culture will be reminded of who they are.

Those people whose culture was stolen from them will get it back.

My voice, culture, and life, will not be white-washed.

It will be cleaned and preserved and stay for generations to come.

Then you will tell me, who has been the one who has been whitewashed.