I don't apologize for my blackness and your fear seems like this beautiful melanin enriched skin is a blessing and a curse. police offers using our young men's as target practice ripping our rich black roots from the ground and scathing them  them all over the cold blood stained concrete streets that my people paved.they just want us to dance sing and play ball to entertain them. they don't want us to succeed and move on to bigger and better things so sinister grins creep upon their faces as they watch us slaughter eachother in the streets. they watch us struggle to get out of poverty they say we're all on welfare and ain't **** but how can we move up in the world and get out of poverty when this system wasn't built to benefit us? we are more than the stereotypes. we are doctors lawyers entrepreneurs nurses designers filmmakers activist.we are intelligent intellectual beings with knowledge that surpasses all understanding. they don't want us to open our mouths and speak our truth...they want us to shut up and chuck and jive and kiss their pasty white ***** to the bone they want us to ignore the blatant racism and discrimination we face everyday and be content that we aren't enduring as much pain as the ones before us have. but we will not shut up. we do experience racism. we do experience discrimination. and our people are dying everyday from it.how dare you utter the words respect yourself and well respect your from the same mouth that slandered my ppl and taught us to hate ourselves with? we were taught to love everything that was white and hate everything that was black and love blonde long straight hair and blue eyes and hate our chocolate skin and ***** hair but these ***** roots are deep...no matter how much you try and destroy them they are deep and run through us all. so my brothers and sisters... be proud of your roots take care of your roots embrace your roots love everything about yourself from that ***** *** hair that breaks all the teeth of your comb to your chocolate skin that glows in the sunlight and those strong minds and powerful voices because black is beautiful, black is powerful black is brilliant, black matters.