Need help finding a piece/poem read long time ago on the net, maybe someone here knows it, too??

[ForeignSpectator]

Hey everyone,

I need some help finding a short piece/poem I read quite some time ago somewhere on the internet. Maybe someone here knows what I mean and maybe even has a link to it... here's what I remember about it :

it was about why black people are called 'colored' when white people
"turn red when embarrassed, turn pale when scared, yellow when sick, green when..." and so on
"and yet black people are called 'colored'"

Something to that effect... does someone here know that or such a piece maybe? I'd need it for some reason now and can't find it googling with all kinds of search phrases...

[Whoa_Nelly]

1. This one?

http://www.simaqianstudio.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=7254

This poem was nominated for the best poem of 2005, written by an African child:

When I born, I black.
When I grow up, I black.
When I go in sun, I black.
When I scared, I black.
When I sick, I black and when I die, I still black.
And you White people:
When you born, you pink.
When you grow up, you white.
When you go in sun, you red.
When you cold, you blue.
When you scared, you yellow.
When you sick, you green.
When you die, you grey and you are calling me coloured!!!

[ForeignSpectator]

2. EXACTLY that one!! Thanks so much for your help!

[msedano]

3. Ossie Davis, "English Language My Enemy"

http://www.sheftman.com/ewrt1a/basma/basup.html

"The English Language Is My Enemy"-- Ossie Davis

The earliest form of what could be called the English language began when the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes invaded the British Isles in the fifth century. Thus it was more than ten centuries before English-speaking peoples came in touch with large numbers of dark-skinned peoples from sub-Saharan Africa. It may be, however, that white-skinned English-speakers were predisposed, because of their language, to think ill of black-skinned Africans. If that is so, the English language prejudges--that is, it is prejudiced. This short essay by black actor, playwright, and author Ossie Davis is not the first indictment of that implied prejudice, but it is the most succinct and pointed.

A superficial examination of Roget's Thesaurus of the English Language reveals the following facts: the word WHITENESS has 134 synonyms, 44 of which are favorable and pleasing to contemplate, i.e., purity, cleanness, immaculateness, bright, shining, ivory, fair, blonde, stainless, clean, clear, chaste, unblemished, unsullied, innocent, honorable, upright, just, straight-forward, fair, genuine, trustworthy (a white man's colloquialism). Only ten synonyms for WHITENESS appear to me to have negative implications--and these only in the mildest sense: gloss over, whitewash, gray, wan, pale, ashen, etc.

The word BLACKNESS has 120 synonyms, 60 of which are distinctly unfavorable, and none of them even mildly positive. Among the offending 60 were such words as: blot, blotch, smut, smudge, sully, begrime, soot, becloud, obscure, dingy, murky, low-toned, threatening, frowning, foreboding, forbidden, sinister, baneful, dismal, thundery, evil, wicked, malignant, deadly, unclean, dirty, unwashed, foul, etc.... not to mention 20 synonyms directly related to race, such as: Negro, Negress, nigger, darky, blackamoor, etc.

When you consider the fact that thinking itself is sub-vocal speech--in other words, one must use words in order to think at all--you will appreciate the enormous heritage of racial prejudgment that lies in wait for any child born into the English Language. Any teacher good or bad, white or black, Jew or Gentile, who uses the English Language as a medium of communication is forced, willy-nilly, to teach the Negro child 60 ways to despise himself, and the white child 60 ways to aid and abet him in the crime.

Who speaks to me in my Mother Tongue damns me indeed! ... the English Language--in which I cannot conceive myself as a black man without, at the same time, debasing myself... my enemy, with which to survive at all I must continually be at war.

[steelerman]

4. Google Search Help

I know you have already found the poem, but this Google search method might help others if they get stuck looking for a half remembered piece of text.

Type this in the Google search box:

intext:I wandered lonely as a cloud

(where 'I wandered lonely as a cloud' is your fragment of text and Google will search all texts with this string. Got me out of trouble lots of times.