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Ebony Stewart, performing at the Button Studio.
About Button:
Button Poetry is committed to developing a coherent and effective system of production, distribution, promotion and fundraising for spoken word and performance poetry.
We seek to showcase the power and diversity of voices in our community. By encouraging and broadcasting the best and brightest performance poets of today, we hope to broaden poetry’s audience, to expand its reach and develop a greater level of cultural appreciation for the art form.
Transcript provided by YouTube (unedited)
0:02
– My mom tells the story of one of the first times
0:04
she took me outside as a baby.
0:07
She brought me to the church house.
0:10
Folks crowded around with big eyes to see the child
0:12
they said, resembled a baby doll, chocolate,
0:14
Ebony’s skin, hair like silk, they said .
0:16
My mother, gleaned holding her black child,
0:19
natural and pure sweet,
0:22
an organic offering from the creator.
0:24
And Ms. Brown came over, peeked in paper bag,
0:27
tested and said “This baby is what they say she is,
0:31
“beautiful, but I’m sorry.
0:35
“I’m just partial to light skin babies,
0:38
“black toast intolerant”
0:40
just like racism, equally as violent,
0:43
also known as colorism, a prejudice,
0:46
or discrimination against individuals
0:47
with a darker skin tone.
0:48
Typically among people of the same ethnic,
0:51
or racial group given to them,
0:52
by European colonizer standards
0:54
with a slave mentality,
0:55
that looks down on others and has an infinity for whiteness.
0:58
See me and immediately try to shrink my spirit
1:00
and I grow to question, but harden this exterior.
1:05
An outer layer marks me as undesirable,
1:09
even though there are 64 different variations
1:12
and distinctions of brown skin,
1:14
black people all over the world,
1:16
lighter skin and ethnicity ain’t never spared none of us,
1:20
but it be your own people.
1:23
My dark skin cousin, with a dark skinned mama
1:26
and grandma told me,
1:28
every man want a red bone, light skin
1:30
badass yellow bone and all I can hear is how
1:32
low his self-esteem is.
1:35
How bad he wanna be a white man.
1:37
Black men have always wanted something better
1:40
than where they come from, even if it’s their women.
1:43
And if she dark skin, she gotta have a good body.
1:47
‘Cause why else would anybody want me,
1:49
unless my body is desirable enough to prefer?
1:51
I am reminded, of how much harder
1:54
I have to love, the self-hate anyone black
1:58
is running from while healing the wounds of those,
2:00
with a darker hue, I ask.
2:02
Internalized racism passed down
2:05
and perpetuated by the media.
2:07
Is she pretty, or is she light skinned?
2:12
Am I dark skinned, or are you unable to let me forget it?
2:16
Do I ever get to just be pretty,
2:18
without a dejected rhetoric,
2:19
or a backhanded compliment?
2:21
Is the complexion of my skin,
2:23
the reason why light skin
2:24
keeps getting lighter and lighter?
2:26
Is the photographer a good photographer,
2:27
if they don’t know how to work with color?
2:30
Or are dark skinned, black women less likely to be married,
2:33
because colorism can’t picture it?
2:35
Does a tattoo artist really have talent,
2:38
if they’ve only ever tatted light skinned girls
2:41
with a dark side?
2:42
Is this why dark skin women reside
2:45
in prison with longer sentences?
2:46
Is dark skin,
2:49
is darkness only ever thought of as sinister
2:54
or is my villain origin story placed in an idea,
2:57
that I should still have to save a world
2:59
that excludes or refuses to choose me?
3:02
Do I remind them, do I remind them of everything,
3:06
especially the physiological deterioration
3:09
based on not white healing?
3:13
I am not a new thing.
3:16
Grown now if I could,
3:17
I would ask Ms. Brown to stop doing the work of whiteness.
3:22
I’d snap my so black there magic fingers,
3:25
to get her and them unstuck from being color struck,
3:28
un-underestimate me, un-hate me,
3:31
see me and love me better than that,
3:33
which you’ve subscribed to.
3:34
Their mouse and undo colorist, thoughts and attitudes.
3:37
This pan racial community, color palette I belong to.
3:41
Lay down your burden language anywhere
3:44
that doesn’t keep conflict, or make difference.
3:48
I wanna trace back our roots and un-suffer
3:51
its unspoken shame.
3:53
I wanna derail offset
3:54
and un-sell the slave trades trauma voyage.
3:57
I wanna be respected, admired and cared for,
4:02
with the same fervor you do, white women.
4:06
I wanna be a black girl entirely,
4:10
whose worth is not measured
4:12
in the anguish of being,
4:15
dark skinned.
—
This post was previously published on YouTube.
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