Content Warning: This excerpt contains descriptions of assault and abuse that may be traumatizing to some readers.

You’re not going to like what I have to say.

To preface my perspective, you need to know one thing about me.

That is, by 2015 A.D., more than 30 beige-skinned men and women residing in a peculiar region of America had told me I was either “ugly” or “unattractive” due to my skin tone and/or my hair texture.

(On any given month, I can wear my hair in a stretched, unstretched, afro, almost-bald, braided or “silky” style. And, I’m often complimented when I’m sporting a silk press, as this hairstyle appears to be in a permanent non-frizzy or “non-nappy” state, which most beige-skinned women and men I’ve known interpret as “normal hair.”)

Where I live, these comments are common due to my phenotype.

Also, these sentiments—that I’ve since accepted as normal—come from the mouths of those who do and do not profess a faith.

For kicks, I’d like to give you a sample of my twentieth and twenty-first century experiences in the so-called greatest country on Earth:

• being called a dog, monkey or Troll hair by my grade school and high school classmates of the beige hue; 

• being told by a beige-skinned employer they can’t hire me due to my skin color; 

• being grossly underpaid or asked to work for free since 1998 A.D.;

• being called a nigger a couple of times by beige-skinned persons; 

• being addressed as “naps” and “cow lips” by my beige-skinned supervisor;

• being asked by my father’s then-girlfriend—who took much pride in her light brown hue—if if I was interested in a skin lightening product (when I declined her kind offer, she proceeded to ask, “Are you sure?”);

• being refused service at a bakery by a beige-skinned cashier who made it clear she doesn’t serve negroes like me; 

• being terrified when a beige-skinned man commanded his Pitbull to run up to me and bite me, as I was trying to enjoy my meal while seated at an outdoor café by myself; 

• being fondled by a beige-skinned man while crossing a street intersection in Manhattan, while running errands in the middle of the day; 

• being told 10,00 times since 2001 A.D. that I’m “well-spoken” or “articulate” by (too) many beige-skinned women and men who seem to believe their observation is a compliment; 

• being vehemently yelled at by a beige-skinned man who demanded to know where I was really from; 

• being “randomly” approached by a beige-skinned, armed police officer—with his drug-sniffing canine—who believed my backpack was filled with drugs, versus textbooks for an upcoming graduate exam at an “elite” academic institution in the Northeast; 

• being told I’ll never meet a man who’ll want to marry me due to my skin tone (one of the reasons I opted to remain a virgin well into my “old” age, is because I’ve met a disturbing number of beige- and brown-skinned men in America who believed brown-skinned and broad-nosed women were less-than-human compared to beige-skinned women, and as such, deserved to be assaulted, raped or regarded as an experiment); and 

• being treated as if I’m a dumb purse-snatcher, pickpocket or natural born criminal by pretty much every beige-skinned person whom I’ve walked past at church, at school, at the gas station, in a retail store, at the grocery store, in a parking lot, at the hospital and so on.

Note that I haven’t detailed the 10 years of suicide-inducing torture sessions I suffered at home, while patiently and silently digesting chronic maltreatment from spiritually malnourished Christians and non-Christians of the beige hue who were sickeningly obsessed with an imaginary concept called “race,” which was strategically invented approximately 530 years before my unfortunate birth.

(Being tortured as a girl and/or a woman in preparation for life in America is normalized in my homeland. I didn’t realize that the torture sessions I survived were exceptionally abhorrent until one of my therapists began crying when I had to recount some of my experiences, and another therapist told me I had a “highly abnormal” upbringing, and was shocked I didn’t end my life.)

When you’ve endured what was designed to destroy your Soul on this h-e-l-l-i-s-h planet, you’ve got three ways to respond.

You can end your pain by ending your life. Not an option for me.

You can remain mad at G-d until your time on Earth expires. Also, not an option for me.

Or, you can work on rebuilding your dignity by digging through the Old and New Testaments for a minimum of 10 years. 

Additionally, you can repeatedly offer your grievances to the G-d who sees your hue and values your humanity. 

Plus, you can document every incident you’ve experienced from 1990 A.D. to 2025 A.D.—whereby your imaginary “race” or pigmentation were deemed the pseudo-reason to justify harming and humiliating you—and figure out the unusual common denominator that, at its core, is predominantly responsible for underwriting systemic bias that targets darker skin tones in the segregated States of America.

Then, you write about it.