You’ve seen girls in magazines,

And they don’t look like me.

A descendant from the blood of royalty,

And I can’t be your beauty queen?

 

So what of Martin’s dream,

Today, is reality?

When slave mentality

Keeps us confined to the chains

Of what you claim is beauty.

 

Am I less than those girls on TV

Because my skin acts with great ebony?

Don’t tell me what you know about beauty.

Because when you were taught those lies

And they survived, I was penalized.

 

But I didn’t decide

What I got to look like;

Instead my people died

Not because of what was inside

But because they weren’t white.

 

Angelou ascents her rise.

Obama still presides.

 

So what about me, a Nubian queen,

Am I allowed to play into your beauty?

When did we all agree

That there aren’t different shades of lovely? 

 

America told me, slavery was free.

No cost to the white majority.

I saved up and had enough

To buy that blacks don't deserve self-love.

 

We perpetuate but alienate the color 

 Of which the magazines try to emulate.

The pages are white, but black are their words.

We're yelling out beauty; it's not our fault we're never heard.

 

We just have to scream louder.

One day, we'll be seen too.

Not as unhurt souls.

But as we are, black and blue.

 

So I don't look like the girls in your magazines,

I can't pretend that my skin isn't changing the way I see things.

But I see beauty in the dark, and on with a light for Dr. King. 

I see beauty in our hearts marked X by any necessary means.