There’s a stigma within the black community

That if you’re educated, you’re acting “white”.

 No longer are you associated with the “ghetto”

 Or should I say your kind,

If you have your pants above your waist

Or gain recognition from a teacher for receiving an A on a test.

It’s shameful, purely indigestible,

 That young black boys and black girls don’t see their worth

Because their eyes are clouded with disgraceful sights

 Of what it looks like to be black.

 “Son, Man, Dawg, I can’t wait to go to college”

 “But how when you barely passed grade school?”

On a side note,

 It’s funny how when we didn’t have freedoms we fought like madmen,

 But now when we do we sit on our numb assess,

Letting the white man determine the amount of our value.

To me black is just a skin color,

 But to them it is a culture,

And let me tell you that I see my culture

As jazz music in the streets of Harlem,

 Educated speakers like Martin Luther King Junior “I have a dream”

 Sports players like Jackie Robison “# 42”

And musicians like James Brown “This is a man’s world”

Not what it is portrayed as today

 Twerking instead of teaching,

Playing instead of preaching,

 And sparking instead of speaking

Don’t get me wrong;

 I listen to 93.9 (D.C.'s #1 for Interactive Hip Hop and R&B aka mostly bullshit music)

Just as much as I listen to 94.7 (Today’s best hits without the rap)

Because I support both sides of this unchanging black and white world

There’s a “funny” story of how in school I got called “white/black girl”

 By small conglomeration of black students more than my own name because,

 Well I didn’t act, let alone resemble those of my skin.

 My immediate families this way too, you know, educated, well off, proper

 What they would call white.

And the sad part is that our own family puts us down;

For not agreeing to live the life that society says is fit for a brown skin.

They say, “Y’all are living in white states and driving white cars”

It is black people that give luxuries a color.  

And I will never apologize to them

Or anyone else for wanting to better myself,

And the generation that succeeds me

At 25 or 50, I won’t let my complexion determine the length of my hair,

 The size of my hips, the stereotypes of my culture, the quality of my words,

The sound of my voice, or the pronunciation of my words because

 I am me- black or white.