Afreet of White Privilege

Afreet of White Privilege
 
The jinn provides only one bone-white wish, this wish before you are born that you will be given the freedom to pass.  He places the weight of this wish into your skin.  So unlike my friend Donel, who keeps getting pulled over in the city where we both live.  Three times, he snarls, they have pulled a weapon on him, reminding him that the bullet in the chamber says you’ll be damned long before justice is offered to the likes of you.  Once for a broken tail light, twice for nothing more than the color of his beautiful caramel skin.  They do not ask him about his poems or his plans to transfer to Columbia to learn how to craft screenplays.  The jinn provides him no such blessing, places nothing in his hands that isn’t already there: his Puerto Rican mother and his black father.  As for me, I did not ask for this license to walk about freely with the fear of shadows stalking me every minute I breathe.  If I could summon back the jinn, with a snap of my fingers and an abracadabra, I would kneel and ask for this blessing to be offered once again.  I would say, the fuck, you have made a mistake.  What you offered is a mistake: take it back and share it to every black and brown someone somewhere, to every shade of richness that walks and breathes.  And if this is a magic that cannot be uncast, then take it.  Take it back: this blessing that is no blessing as long as my friend cannot have it, too.