Black is Black – Writers House Review

Team Dark skin, Team light skin

#Yellowbone, #RedBone

But I’ve always thought that black is black

Still a people enslaved

Fighting against a system built off of the blood, sweat and tears

Of the Mulattos, the Darkies, and anyone

Who wasn’t blessed to resemble the shade of a brown paper bag

I went to school in the middle of the hood

Heard “tar baby, dark as night, straight off the boat”

Titles given to me or people like me with dark complexions

Kids my age who, like me, would not pass the brown paper bag test

Kids who were no less affected by systemic oppression than me

Kids who ran past the same tainted water fountains we couldn’t drink from

Kids who sat in the same squeaky desk in an understaffed, undermaintained school

Listening to underpaid teachers

A people so used to segregation that they placed it within their own communities

And passed it down to their children

As if it was negro spiritual that would get them through the day

I am kissed by the sun

And blessed to have the power to embrace my dark melanin skin

And I only wish that those same kids that looked down on my complexion

Could understand the pain that our people have long felt

So that we could now freely wear every shade of melanin

Anaiah James, class of 2023, is from Paterson, New Jersey. She is a Biology Premed and LGBTQ Diversity Advocate and Leader.