Watered Down

This is a poem about misogynoir, colorism and light-skinned privilege

Sheela. Skin as fair as french vanilla and lips as thick as Kerri's with eyes as blue as the Atlantic ocean. She is Sheela, the "exotic" one, the one that all the guys want to know. Her curls are soft, black and shiny and they hang down pass her shoulders, touching her slender back. People often fix their mouth to tell her "your hair is long for a black chick, how in the world did you get it like that??" but thats not the first nor the last time she would ever hear such dumb s**t. The white folks consider her black but the acceptable type of black, the type of black that's invited to the white college parties, the type that Hollywood tolerates, the type that they consider "less threatening" while the black folks consider her "exotic", the closest thing that black is to white, the watered down type of black, half-breed, deluted, and in their eyes that automatically makes her "beautiful", and so the black girls roll their brown eyes at her and suck their teeth and the black men choose her to be on their arms and as eye-candy in their videos, magazines, et etc because she is "exotic", the acceptable type of black, the closest black is to white, the watered down type of black, half-breed, deluted. And she looks in the mirror and she throws a rock at it and she cries and she cries because who are you when you're a black person benefiting from the likes of white supremacy, who are you when you're a black person donning the same skin as the oppressor, who are you when your sisters hate you because they are told by your brothers that they need to look like you, when you are told your fair skin is what ever made you beautiful in the first place, when you are pitted against darker toned women by men, who are you? Blue eyes, fair skin but black pride, black blood and black soul, and just want to be accepted by your own...so sista, who are you? They dont know nothing, they dont see nothing, just percieve you as the acceptable type of black, the closest black is to white, the watered down type of black, half-breed, deluted......I'm suppose to hate you, they want me to hate you, they make me try to hate you, they compare me to you but I wont because you're my sister and they just want more power over you and over me. Its their way of keeping us oppressed, of keeping us blind and if we continue to feed into it then we'll never be free and would continue to be left behind.

Author's Note

Tell me what you think? Be brutally honest but respectful 😊

Reviews

[KNTRL_B]

Thank you for sharing your work. I would suggest you sit down and try to flesh out this poem a little bit more clearly what you want out of this poem. It feels like there are too many concrete moments in this poem that could easily be transformed into a longer segmented piece or multiple pieces. I love your subject matter. It is beautiful that you took the time to write this poem. It feels like this could be an ode or a ballad to reconnecting with dark and light skin sisters. However, it would be best to focus on your form. Since the poem touches on multiple scenarios at once by having your poem set up as a paragraph it makes it difficult to keep up with you flow. I would also try deleting the first line. It flows better when you start off by saying "She is Sheela". Again, thank you very much for sharing and I cannot wait to see what other things you create.