As people, we find it quite innate

To want to segregate things into their own domains

To classify, catalogue, codify, categorize

Even our fellowmen we strive to systematize.

And though the systems aren’t inherently wrong

There’s a specific occurrence that tags along

Separation causes cooperation to decrease,

As it goes: division bleeds peace.

We classify people into a set of colors;

That’s what? Black, white, red, brown, and yellow?

And decide that one is worth more than the other

For reasons the sane of us would deem unreasonable.

We, or at least some, decide that this must be

Because of what’s been dictated by history

As if supremacy bonds with ethnicity

An idea that interrupts interpersonal propinquity.

Aside from black, white, red, brown, and yellow,

There are countless other ways we segregate one another:

By our faith, who we love, how much we earn for a living,

An infinite number of boxes, up for the filling.

And as the amity slips- no, bleeds -through our fingers

As fast as bullets fly when a gun gets pulled by its trigger

Conflicts arise; wars are fought, societies die

And the number of rioters reach a new high.

Stating opinions in a well-formed chant

About things that they barely understand

About faith, about class, about love, about color

Like brash, yet undeterred, pseudo-scholars.

In the chaos, they must feel as if they are free;

Free to spit vulgar words and adamantly disagree

With ideas that they don’t even put the effort into understanding

Because all their eyes can see is that difference is a bad thing.

Here’s the thing though: the malice doesn’t stay within the riots,

You see it everywhere, even in the quiet.

You see it in the way people treat one another

With hushed words laced with venom and glares filled with rancor.

I’ll let you in on a little secret:

The problem doesn’t lie on the number of existing sets

Rather, it is in the toxic mentality

That when we are divided, we cannot work in unity.

While it is quite true that division bleeds peace

Like with a wound, there is a way for the conflict to cease

And that’s through understanding our fellowmen

So that even if we are divided, we may work in harmony once again.