It was a question that plagued me even in my dreams and begged for a reply

Why haven’t we changed?

Obscure, it seemed it was, when a stranger approached me

And broached me with the point that although there’re more colors in the electromagnetic spectrum Today

is just like any other day…in the past.

Why haven’t we changed?

As I’m looking into the mirror, the stranger appears and pulls me in.

And as I’m tearing against the current and the feeling that this might not be something I want to experience,

I experience it anyway to get to the answers that I needed.

The color is faded when we arrive

and everything supposed to be alive on a person’s face is dead.

No emotion,

 just continuous labor and whites who favor themselves over my people.

My people who are hard at work working for the no color man.

Sweating for the no sorrow man.

Bleeding for the no tomorrow man.

My people who, although lack the bright colors and tones I see in my time,

are EXACTLY the same.

Why haven’t we changed?

 The question begins to make sense and as I look for the stranger to tell him I understand,

a man grabs me and says it’s time to play the question game.

The same game I remember my parents and their parents talking about.

A game to diminish our intelligence

and create the semblance that we were the weaker race.

All we were, were faces in a place where we weren’t deserving of being.

Faces misplaced along with emotions we were supposed to be feeling.

We had accepted our position in this society.

We had settled for the life it seemed we were stuck with.

Why haven’t we changed?

 In my time, it’s the same.

Except the game of questions is totally different,

 for instead of questioning intelligence society questions our character;

they know we are intelligent because we proved so in the past.

However, they look at us sideways because we are the stronger race.

We struggled to get where we are,

we conquered their people.

Epiphany,

 mainly because we had the power all along to determine our own destiny

and questioning is just questioning.

The whites have never known suffering.

And we haven’t changed because we don’t need to.

We carry the burden of the past to remind us it happened.

We carry it because when times get rough, we know we got through it in the first place

and history has a way of repeating itself.

By looking in the mirror,

we Blacks can see the strength that radiates around the various shades of our color.

We are a closely knit community that pulls together because we started our lives together.

We know each other’s pains.

We weathered the rains to get to the sunshine.

 We are not the people they think we are. We are far greater.