I Wear It On My Skin

When I go outside, the light reveals my truth. I cannot take it off, nor do I want to do so. However, at times the heavy weight of the pigment in my skin bears a toll. At times I want to take a break from all of the negativity and the hate. I wish it were so easy, but the reality is that I wear activism on my skin just by existing in a world not always willing to include me.

I saw a few articles the other day about people getting burned out by activism. I felt their pain of having tough conversations with friends and loved ones about racism. It’s definitely not an easy topic. I’ve had to step back from several people because of it. When I do try to escape from the issue, I only dive deeper into a world where my skin doesn’t match the default.

I become my own constant reminder of a system of inequality, and my beautiful melanated skin gets dragged back to conversations about race. Even if I wanted to ignore my Black skin, others wouldn’t, and their actions against people with my skin color still include me.

I’ve been told on numerous occasions that so many “don’t see race.” The sentiment fell in line with the “all lives matter” camp where they would go out of their way to not see race by erasing Black people entirely. They, of course, have never seen it that way because their default Crayola skin color was always seen while I was stuck having to practice…