We need an ethnic cleansing. 
A cleansing of, a stripping off, 
the trappings of culture and nationality, of pigment and pigheadedness, that we cling to trying to make ourselves more worthy, more deserving, more entitled to. 
As if they could. 
As if by making someone them, we can make ourselves more us. 
As if we are somehow shrouded in the right to be, to breathe, to walk by virtue only of things like melanin and creed and histories we made up. 
We walk around as if every waking moment isn’t what it is: a gift of pure grace to which we hold no claim. How can something be stolen from us when it didn’t first belong? 
We hold no claim, so we distract ourselves by saying that it’s them not us that should be grateful. Or giving. Or just gone. 
We are so terrified of the unspoken knowing that it is not ours that we fight for more, believing life is finite both in breadth and depth and there are only so many that can hold it before it is depleted.
We cling to wealth, and land, to skin and stone, to anything we can make ourselves believe is tangible enough to grab.
But life is intangible. Life is unclaimable. It’s infinite but only insomuch as it is shared. We must be dispossessed of it before it can possess us, and imbue us with all the gifts it has to give. We must let go to take hold. We must release our claim on it, so that it can claim us completely. 
We need an ethnic cleansing. Release us from ourselves.