Mr Exclusion and discrimination, I call you by name as shadows press against my veins, drumming pain into every heartbeat. You gnaw at the roots of my soul, chiseling away my sense of self until exhaustion settles deep into my bones. Each day, your presence weaves sorrow through my emotions, sapping my resolve and bruising my abilities, leaving me to navigate a world shaped by your relentless scrutiny. While research suggests that persistent exclusion can fragment one's social identity and disrupt core values, the wounds inflicted by your actions feel far too personal, reaching beyond the academic into the rawness of lived experience. So, I beg you, retreat from the threshold of my being; abandon your pursuit, for your absence is the only reliable cure my battered spirit can imagine.
Born of a Tutsi mother and a Hutu father, I have walked through life marked by the dual legacy of my blood, each part of me turned into a reason for exclusion. The boundaries society built around my lineage became a cage, crafting new wounds by turning community pride into suspicion and kinship into cold division. Often, with every introduction and every utterance of my name, I felt measured and found deficient—my ancestry wielded as a tool to assign me the status of less than whole. For those like me, whose heritage disrupts simple categories, the world can become an arena where language, family, and even appearance is all distorted into justifications for inequality. When I am denied belonging for both what I am and what I am not, the very marrow of my spirit aches under the weight of an injustice that feels as old as my earliest memory.
Furthermore, exclusion and discrimination have become the silent architects of my daily experience, reshaping the most routine encounters at their whim. My skin, so often marked as different and paired with a name pronounced with hesitation or suspicion, became an invitation for others to reject, judge, or dismiss me in moments where belonging should have come naturally. These prejudices have voiced themselves in the quiet verdicts of judges, the calculated doubts of lawyers, the wary glances from recruiters, indifferent shrugs from bosses, and the suspicious questions asked by police—each interaction reinforcing the message that my identity is a liability rather than a strength. Research shows that language and heritage frequently intersect with settings of discrimination, transforming names and speech into entry points for exclusion within education, employment, and public life . Such persistent bias embeds itself into the fabric of daily existence, distorting every opportunity and dialogue before words have even been spoken.
On that day, October 16, 2018, the world turned from indifferent architect to ruthless judge, etching lasting wounds with institutional decisions cloaked in bureaucracy and animosity. Society was instructed to preserve a token gesture—a show of tolerance neither anchored in justice nor genuine belonging—while my rightful place dissolved into ritualized exclusion, transforming my being into a symbol stripped of its dignity. That school, a supposed sanctuary, fabricated accusations from hatred rather than fact, setting a stage where an innocent soul was thrust into peril and every resource for self-preservation was systematically denied. The devastation echoed beyond the immediate event, hollowing out my identity and spirit with cadenced blows that research confirms leave long-term scars on personal well-being, self-esteem, and resilience. While the outward damage was severe, it was the silent uprooting of my soul and life by these coordinated actions that truly defined that day, leaving both the memory and the pain etched into my core.
Yet even as these wounds pulse within me, I refuse to surrender the voice that endures beneath the assault of exclusion and discrimination. With every plea I shape, I insist that you release your hold—let my identity breathe unburdened, let my soul mend in the space where acceptance might finally grow. Though life has carved sorrow into my lineage and forced resilience into the marrow of my being, research attests that those who survive rejection can cultivate powerful resources within themselves, transforming lasting pain into the capacity for hope and compassion . I demand of you, exclusion and discrimination: withdraw your shadow and allow my spirit to reclaim its place in the light, no longer fighting for acknowledgment but belonging by birthright. Only when you give up and vanish can I—and those marked as outsiders—fully flourish, our worth unbound by the boundaries you have drawn