Saluton!: What's your ethnic makeup?

Wow. This is a really interesting 4-minute movie available from the Media That Matters festival. It features the spoken poem "Slip of the Tongue" by Adriel Luis.

You must hear and see this!

Here is the transcribed text of the spoken poem:

"Slip of the Tongue"
Adriel Luis

My glares burn through her
And I'm sure such actions aren't foreign to her
Because the essence of her beauty is - well -
The Essence of Beauty

And in the presence of this higher being
The weakness of my masculinity kicks in
Causing me to personnify my
wannabe big-bawler shot-caller God's gift to the female species in shiny shoes rapper
like
ayo what's rollin' shorty what's your sign what's your size I dig your style yo

Now
This girl was no fool
She gives me a dirty look with the quickness
like
'Boy you must be stupid'
So I'm looking at myself going
'Boy, you must be stupid'
But,
Looking upon her,
I AM kinda feeling her style
So I try again but instead of adressing her porperly I blurt out one of my fake-ass player-istic lines like
Guurl... You must be a traffic ticket - cause you've got FINE written all over you

Now

She's trying to leave
And I'M trying to keep her here
And so in a final attempt I be like
Guurl... What is yo ethnic makeup?

See

At this point her glare is scorching through me.
And somehow she manages to make her brown eyes resemble like some kind of brown fire or something but this is no
snap her head movement
no
palm to face click of tongue middle finger roll her eyes Girl Power chant

She just
glares at me with these burning eyes
And her gaze
Grabs you at the throat
And she says
Ethnic Makeup?

First of all
makeup's just over the counter colonised, commodified utility that my sisters have been programmed to use
Forcing them to convert their natural state
In order to imitate what another sister must look like in her next sister's natural state because people keep telling me that the Other sister's natural state is more beautiful than the first sister's natural state.
At the same time the other sister isn't even in her natural state because she's trying to imitate yet another sister.
So in actuality, the natural state the first sister was trying to imitate?
Wasn't even natural in the first place.

Now
I-I'm thinking
Daaaaaamn - this girl's kicking knowledge

But meanwhile, she keeps spitting on it like -
Fine - I'll tell you about my ethnic makeup
I wear foundation.
But not that powdery stuff.
I wear the foundation laid by my indigenous people.
It's that foundation that makes it so the past being globalised -
I can still vocalise with confidence the fact that I know where my roots are.
I wear this foundation not upon my face - but within my soul
and I take this from my ancestors because I'll be damned if I ever let a European or American corporation tell me what my foundation should look like

And I'll wear lipstick
So that my lips can stick to the ears of men
So they can experience in Surround Sound my screams of agony
with each lash of rulers
measuring tapes
and scales
as if my waist line and weight are inversely proportional to my value as a human being

See my lips?
They stick
But not together
Rather they flail open with flames
To burn down this culture that once kept them shut.

N'I don't mess with eye shadow
But my eyes
Shadow over this time
Seeing the means you use to keep me blind
But you can't cover my eyes
Look into them

My eyes
foreshadow change
My eyes
foreshadow light
And I'ain't into hair dying
But I am here, dying because
this opression just won't get out of my hair
They form these highlights on my passion
They tangle around my mind these opressions
Stressing me
So that even though I don't dye them
In a couple years they'll be looking grey

So what's my ethnic makeup?
I don't have any
because
your ethnicity isn't something you can just make up

And as far as that shit that my sisters put on their faces?
That's not makeup.

That's make believe.

I- I c- I can - I can't seem to look up at her
And I'm sure that such action's aren't foreign to her because her expression shows that she knows that my mind is in a trance. As her footsteps fade my ego's left in crutches.

And rejection
never sounded
so sweet.