“What does it mean to be black?”
“How does it feel to walk in your skin?”
“What do we go through as people that is so different?”
“I wish I was black…”
Do you really want to know?
To emphasize with us?
I mean, you can’t right?
Because it doesn’t matter how much you try and understand Until, you are transported into the hands of a black man with cane rows and baggy pants on the block with his mans at 8pm
You could never understand
Until you are transported into the body of a young black girl who feels obligated to start videotaping when stopped on the highway for speeding
You could never understand
So eager to be emphatic
But what does that do for me?
Do you use your white privilege, only for you to see?
Or do you tell your partners in tea that the coffee is too black and the creme won’t lighten it’s steep?
Do you understand what I mean?
That this black thing, isn’t just my skin color
It’s a whole daily feat
It’s a life long process of making myself black enough to keep my culture alive but white enough to get a job
Do you understand what I mean?
When corporations rather me synthetically straighten my natural curls but then say they only want natural hairstyles in our work contract
Do you understand what I mean?
When our Afros and braids are considered wild and trendy to them but they are indigenous to us
Do you understand what I mean?
When I was told I was too dark by other black girls who were told they were too light by other black girls
Do you understand what I mean?
When I learned why we say fuck the police and how all lives really don’t matter
Do you understand what I mean?
When I found out that my friends grandmother was a slave and that history wasn’t so far away
Do you understand what I mean?
Or do you just see?
Do you, see systemic racism build and overlook it’s oppression?
Or do you console your colored friends when we deal with inbred depression?
Do you cry with us when we explode our confessions of racism, prejudice and all its suppression?
Or do you fade away when it’s in our faces?
When we feel oppressed because of all the discrimination
Are you the type that says , “it’s not that kind of nation anymore.”
Are you even sure?
Do you understand what I mean?
You want to be in my corner but, can you really see?
No chaser.
You don’t want to be black.
You couldn’t taste her
No creme.