18 years of life to learn a
simple lesson, Black Is Beautiful, but
you can keep your selective desires to yourself.

 
“I prefer to date black girls.”
“Black girls are more fun.
“Black girls are hotter”
“You don’t wrinkle like white people”

 
Only nothing creases except the paperback spine between your
thumb and forefinger, and mine is
one made of collagen, wrapped around flesh
and blood that changes with time.

 
Hearing those statements from
my white girlfriend made me question her
attraction. Especially during a time where she was falling
out of love, the nature of the statement is comical
and has left a nagging chink in my psyche.

 
I love you took on a whole new meaning.

 
A young, naive Black Woman
taking it as a compliment, with an unnecessary comparison of
Us to Them, but now They want to be
like Us and society likes what it sees.

 
Society creates laws to kill
the former, pumping Us full of toxins they don’t want
their fair-skinned children of God near.

 

If darkness represents evil and filth,
how come the black hasn’t cracked?

 
Preferences, meant to provide an advantage
to Us become an assertion of dominance
from my white girlfriend.

 
Now, I always question whether it is connection or
obligation that bounds our hearts and pussies

 

II.

After coming to college, I met a
professor. She was black, beautiful
And intelligent, but my immediate reaction
was how impressive her achievements were
for a Black Woman.

 
I was ashamed. I still am.

 
But society has made that a rarity.
a Black Woman with a PhD. My sister,
a young Black Woman with a degree in
biology, studying pharmacy at one of the greatest colleges in the country. There need to be
more women like this.
I have identified the problem.
Not Everyone wants that.
Not everyone
can be like that.

 
But “Oh how I wish it could be so,”
says the white man
in the Senate. You cannot MLK Jr-ize
Us all. I refuse to respect
and assimilate into a
Society that has failed
and blatantly ignored the best
interests of those who look like me.
But I already did. I live behind a
White picket fence while my cousin
lives behind it’s barb wire alternative.
My great great great great great grandma now
Permanently resides under her master’s house.