Dark Skinned Girl

sure I'm dark skinned
it could be 20 degrees outside
if the sun is out
and the clouds are no where to be found
you can pretty much guarantee that I am sweating

taking all of your light
you may need extra light to see me
to be fair
being seen is overrated
sometimes I don't want to be seen

if you can't see me intellectually
if you can't see me spiritually
if you can't see me consciously
i don't care if you can see me physically

you hide me in a closet
put me backstage
have me working somewhere in the basement
i can answer the phone
i can sort the mail
i can clean the toilet
do everything no one else wants to do
but i can't greet people
i cannot welcome anyone in
i am not the face of your organization

'i have been told
that i hate myself for going against myself
yet you never go for me
but i don't want anyone to go through
what i've been through
so can i distance myself from that reality
can i get away from myself
by embracing that which is unlike myself'

this is what some dark skinned people think about
i feel sorry for them
my heart goes out to them
but i guess negative attention
and the wrong type of acceptance
is better than not being accepted at all

they made a documentary about me
they did a color test
yeah i thought that the light skinned baby looked better
because it was a drawing
but in order to get the point across you have to play fair
give me an actual photograph of a dark skinned child
and i might tell you they were the best looking ...

why can't you play fair
what makes you think that you can just throw on a darker shade
and that makes it look better
when all of the babies were ugly
from bad to worse, and i will choose bad
that is not a real choice

i might be dark
but i have more of a presence
than anyone else of any other shade
because everyone is preoccupied with me
it is the contrast between me and that other girl
that makes you want to chose that other girl
if i did not exist
you wouldn't care about that other girl

no one cares about the norm
everyone wants to bleach themselves
in order to make themselves feel better
men would rather have a fake, false, shell of a woman
than a real woman

so we try to take away everything that is natural about us
our dark skin, our nappy hair, our affinity for loud clothing
try to get conservative and bourgeois and dolled up
Afrocentrism means nothing
Ethnocentrism means everything
and everyone is going to judge
and we are going to judge ourselves
and we will judge ourselves more harshly
than anyone else ever will

we want to appeal to these men
that are supposed to be heterosexuals
but are just little boys, confused about their sexuality
looking for something that does not exist

no one is happy
Caucasians adopt the dark skinned children from Africa
while we try to abort who would have been the dark skinned children in the US
everyone is a hypocrite
yet here I stand
dark skinned
supposed to be Black
supposed to be authentic
an Oreo I might like "White" things
insecure you might try harder
come across as "Blacker" than me
everyone has something to prove
no one has anything to show
everyone is prejudiced
yet everyone is searching
you already found what you were looking for
but it was too dark for you to see
it doesn't look the way you would like for it to
so you keep searching
no glasses, no apparatus, no optometrist and no opthomologist
yet they say i wear contact lenses
somehow i think they think i look better with them on ...