New Poem Alert: Color. Struck?
About the Dark / Light ISM
COLOR. STRUCK?
We see endless examples
Of light-skinned / dark-skinned opposition
Seeds planted deeply in our minds
The madness of this matrix keeps us divided by design
Like when little dark-skinned girls are taught:
Watch out for them yella girls
They think they’re better than you
Think they’re cute and they look down on folks of a darker hue…
Like when little light-skinned girls are taught:
Watch out for them dark-skinned girls
They’re just jealous through and through
‘Cause your skin and hair make you “cuter” and boys might like you better, too…
Like when Black boys are taught
To value girls by their shade
That redbones are the greatest “prize”
Bein’ with them makes you look good in this society’s eyes
No surprise when we grow up
Slingin’ side eyes and distrust
Programmed to feed the schism
That warps the sense of self with rampant colorism
It’s a form of madness
Where punishment and privilege
Are so deeply intertwined
That whatever your shade, it manipulates your life and mind
This toxic propaganda
Sets us up as adversaries
Even before birth
Skewing our sensibilities, distorting our self-worth
Our conflicts feed the ISMS
Guide the puppeteer’s strings
Manipulating us to promote
The venom of us versus us—we’ve got to get the antidote
In these days of Reckoning
Awareness is steady growing
Can you hear the rising voices?
Broadening our possibilities, creating new and better choices?
There is no pre-fab formula
Or insta-pill we can take
To magically become unstuck
We’ll have to do the heavy lifting to stop being color struck
It won’t be easy, won’t be quick
To decolonize, to heal
And work towards solidarity
We’ve got to come together to fight our bigger enemy
We can’t keep wounding each other
If we want real, actual change
The battles are too great to fight divided
Let’s replace these long divisions with ways to become united!
Copyright © TaRessa Stovall 2024
Beautiful! 😍😎🔥
Wow, that was amazing and so true Sis! It's so hard not to feel divided and it feels like to me that social media def perpetuates it at times. We all strive for the same thing in the end and more could be accomplished if we only healed that part of our legacy.