Neon Tetra Fish Negro - A Piece by Mariko Rooks

Piece background: On Friday, June 6th, 2020, Skai Jackson revealed on Twitter that a Yale pre-med student and a former water polo teammate unapologetically used anti-Black racial slurs on social media. Yale women’s water polo had ended all association with this teammate for unrelated reasons several months prior, but the incident opened up larger, healthy conversations about inequity and anti-Blackness in aquatics that will hopefully lead to lasting structural change. This is my response. 

For context: neon tetra fish change color in the sunlight

Neon Tetra Fish Negro

I sink until 

I hit concrete. 

In this world of floating hair and weightless limbs

I can feel every drop of water that flows over my scalp

through my almost Black curls 

the only sounds that survive my descent 

are the bubbles of each exhale. 

Black people drown at a rate 1.4x higher than white people 

which means that the number of Emmett Tills dragged from a river is unequivocally proportional to the number of city planners who kept municipal pools out of Black neighborhoods,

Is unconditionally derived from the number of slaves who tried to sprint like Ahmaud 

over the sides of wooden ships 

when we didn’t even have the right to drown.

According to White liberals, this recent change in drowning rights means that racism doesn’t exist anymore.

In most pools and police forces, the water looks blue but the walls are painted white.

In most pools and protests, chlorine and tears evaporate into the sky.

If you multiply (1) illegal arrest warrant for Breonna Taylor by 

(1) Black woman ever on the US Olympic water polo team 

you get 7,666 dead Black bodies 

since I first picked up a ball in the pool and

I still can’t count 

how many times I’ve had a 

white girl’s hand 

on my neck

playing this sport. 

I wonder 

if it’s ever been her hand 

I wonder 

If she ever wanted to snap it. 

Maybe, I think, if there were outdoor pools in Connecticut

As if on cue, the clouds part. 

See, every time I claim this water

this birthright denied 

chaining my ancestors at the bottom of bathtubs and oceans alike 

every time their split pieces 

are hit with the warmth of yellow California sun,

I am reborn 

from these waves 

my Blackness returns to my skin // Aphrodite has nothing

on the beauty of my mixed metamorphosis.

I turn white girl tanning sessions into cultural appropriation with every drop of melanin 

they talk about light-skinned but surely this is the height of privilege

this luxury and unbelonging 

this transmutation into part of myself 

this Blackness I carry made flesh

When these revelations have replaced  

all of the air

  in my lungs 

I shoot to the surface with salt on my tongue 

I can no longer tell the difference between chlorine or tears 

as I inhale 

like George Floyd never will

I go forth in this water, 

a reckoning

in my throat: 

Careful, Am*nda R*se,

Winter camouflage is a curious form of mixed privilege,

but when June comes, 

you’ll see how many n*ggers are on the water polo team.