Black, 

white, 

than there’s me. 

I am light skinned. Not 

“a light skinned”, 

just lightskinned because 

“a lightskinned” singles out the stereotypes. 

No,No 

“a lightskinned” means 

I AM the stereotype. 

It means I have to make that 

face

 with every picture, I have to 

dress to impress 

every day, and I always have to have my 

x’s y’s and z’s at the end of my 

contact list. 

NO, NO, NO. I AM “LIGHSKINNED”, 

my body is yellow 

and that’s the only thing that makes me different 

from anybody else. 

We all live in the same world; go through the world’s problems 

and you’re worried 

red about my yellow skin. 

“Lightskinned the right skin” right, 

so what in this world 

is the wrong skin? 

Skin, is skin, is skin 

and mines just so happens to have the best of 

both worlds. 

Yes, I do have curly hair, 

pretty eyes, 

and straight teeth, 

but I don’t have that mentality. 

I don’t speak drake 

with every girl I talk to, 

I don’t get emotional over the last subject, 

and I really don’t care what people think about me 

as long as long as I am not labeled with the letter “A” before my nationality. 

I am black and white 

and my skin is the answer to 

racism, 

discrimination, 

segregation, 

the population registration act, 

the immortality act, 

and my parents flicked off the prohibition of mixed marriages act 

by creating me, 

I apartheid the apartheid. 

I became a color. 

Red, yellow, light yellow, bright yellow 

and my skin is so controversial. 

Now that I am a half breed everything is me. 

Zebras are lightskinned, 

penguins are lightskinned, 

yin and yang are lightskinned, 

pandas, 

chess, 

the paper this poem is typed on, 

the white house, 

Mickey Mouse, 

Tom and Jerry. 

Everything is lightskinned. 

I am that light complexion, 

I am colored. 

I am colored, 

I am colored, 

I am not “A” color. 

My skin tone screaming 

“is this my reality”, 

and hitting the ears of 

fictional stereotypes, 

but it goes in through one ear and out as 

social non-fiction 

through the mouths of society screaming back 

“yes, you have to live with it”. 

I have to live with societies stereotypes of 

ME. 

I might as well look at my 

sun skin 

in the reflections of the moons fake eyes 

so time can mend the 

broken mirror. 

The mirror I looked down on from a 

solar eclipse 

so society would look up to me 

every day, 

wishing they could 

realize 

with real eyes 

the real lies 

they preached 

about Milano’s being halfricans 

and me being from halfrica, 

but nobody looks to the stars to find out 

where we originated from. 

The sun is my skin, 

the moon is how I feel, 

life is what I cannot live, 

all because society labeled me 

as “A lightskinned”, 

and my life is 

“A stereotype”.