#movingfoward

- Lauren Holton 

Just because of the melanin in my skin I am seen as aggressive.

But if I had no pigmentation I would be seen as passive, no passion.

Just doing whatever the white man tells me.

Is that why you bury me in lies to disguise my true presence?

Is it because I’m a queen that endures heart aches and heart shatters.

Picking up the broken pieces and putting them back together.

Trying to stand tall against the ignorance and the oppression of my colorful brothers and sisters who hide behind lies that hold them captive,

To think, color signifies no hope and that it’s the root of depression

Sadly, a white world seems more attractive.

Because they’re blinded by the stigma that seeds the deception that white skin and non-nigga rooted hair is better.

So I listen, and try to pry off the cataract’s of distress that had me feeling as if I were less.

Due to the seed of discrimination and that disease of self-hate.

To compare myself to a tone of skin when I can be the voice to change a tone of a nation that’s inflicted with hatred

Black men hating black women and white men hating anyone who is not mutated.

I find it hard to win a battle where I’m drowning, 

Suffocating  in the arrogance of the privilege .

Arms flaring out panicky, screaming for help,

But my brothers and sisters feel I’m overly dramatic,

Selling their selves short to a society that’s systematic,

That thrive off the backs of the innocence and deprive them of humanity.

No longer will I settle for the injustice in this nation, the injustice of my neighbor

I will use my aggression for the betterment of my people.

A trait seen on black women as being negative,

But seen on white women as being persistent.

See, I find it contradicting,

To take a characteristic and flip it due to the color of my pigment

And then you try to dismiss it,

And use your lies to subject a race to a trait that really doesn’t have a negative indication.

And then you want me to be submissive,

To live in false calumnies that discourage me to see what God truly instilled in me.

So now I become resistant,

Waterproof to the paradigms of your ignorance that define me by false realities,

Armored up with God on one side and a sword to kill all calamity, 

And you can’t restrain me,

Blamelessly breaking down the foundations that were established to offset and oppress a people who were ripped of their identity,

That got stuck in a slave system that was revolutionized to adapt to modern society 

if you're not moving forward, you're going backward.⁠

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