Plastic Smiles

I feel the eyes on me everywhere I go

Daring me to make a move, daring me to be better

My color is seen as a defect to me,

Something that holds me back

Never are they openly cruel or abusive,

But their ignorance comes through in their sugar coated words

Behind plastic smiles they see me as inferior.

Worse than the actual physical display of racism is an uglier kind

The kind you know is there but is never spoken.

They say “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”

And so it is in our “politically correct” world.

Everyone on tiptoes dancing around what they truly feel,

That we are never truly equal.

So more and more of us are being born with that same slave mentality

That we can do no better than we have been made to believe.

Not only do we do nothing to rise against the inferior standards set for us,

We allow our unity to crumble with our “each man for himself” policy

When one of us does something to rise up, there has to be a rumor behind it.

Always a cold empty smile when we pass each other on the streets,

shutting each other out in a world where we have already been singled out.

How can we expect equality in their world when we are so divided in ours?

By Soul Sister