Being black in America is washing away shea butter. Removing all of your olive, moroccan, and tea-tree oil from the dark mahogany amber coils that fall to your shoulders and sides like the crown everyone refuses to give you. Potential proprietors and bosses telling you that they’re going in a another direction when the true issue was your hair wasn’t growing in the right direction. As if this isn’t a form of appropriation. 

Being black in america is having to work twice as hard for a scholarship, degree, an education, all to best your underqualified competitors. Don’t be fooled, the only thing that corroborates their status is their unseasoned language and paychecks containing 1 to o many zeros. 

Being black in America is hearing the heavy drawled out syllables drip from your vocal chords like honey. They coalesce in a racist throat too thick to swallow, too black to swallow. 

Being black in America is a 14 year-old being shot in the gut because the hoodie fashioned on the nape of his skull remained there too long after the blinding street lights screamed their warning. 

Being black in America is my mother telling my brother to be careful, to be compliant, to be weary because she isn’t ready to see his dark skin transpire into raven ink only to become imprinted on every newspaper article and column. She turns to him and says you will not become another statistic. 

Being black in America is having to wax and wane your identity 24/7. #Team light skinned, #Team dark-skinned. #Team skin isn’t the issue. #Team when are you going to understand(realize) that whether you are a beautiful tan mocha or a sun-kissed cocoa, that you are still a beauty to behold no matter the eye. Realize that racist people will still deny that the framework and foundation of their economy was built by the toilsome and tormented faces you are proud to call ancestor. 

Understand that your spun words are more powerful than the fiercest of hurricanes. That when your thunderous hips sway you produce a white hot lightning storm that demands attention. 

 So be proud of yourself, be proud if your tone, be proud of yourself as a whole because your entire essence can not defined by one thing that attributes to your self -definition.  You are no question to be solved, no puzzle to be deconstructed and put back together again. Understand that your existence harbors no need for vindication.