“Black Is Beautiful” these words are said daily; these words are used for black society motivation. The question is, is it easy to act upon these words?

Dark and ugly is how they view me. Dark and inferior, that’s what they think about me. Is it about the skin colour or is it about a pure heart? Growing up I was never knowledgeable about “melanated beings”. Growing up I was filled with negative thoughts that being dark-skinned automatically makes you ugly. I have experienced criticism from my fellow African brothers and sisters. I have been told that I am not beautiful because I am dark skinned.

Of course, not everyone viewed me as dark and ugly. I had a cheerleader who always said to me “you are beautiful as you are” but the problem with adapting to these words was that the society had portrayed light-skinned people more beautiful than dark-skinned people.

Back in 2017, I wrote a piece that consisted of the following words “I’m discriminated by my skin colour; I’m judged by my skin colour because I’m DARK. It’s okay…” and these words changed how I viewed my skin colour. From that day, I made an oath to live for educating other dark-skinned people about our skin colour.

Therefore, my experience is being criticised, it is how people viewed and judged me pertaining to my skin colour. And from this experience, I received lessons and they are:

• “Being dark-skinned means, you are melanated”,
• “Being dark-skinned means, you are exclusively beautiful”
• “It’s not about the skin colour but it is about a pure heart”

La Melanina Es Hermosa = Melanin is beautiful

My advice would be to adapt to making your experiences turn into lessons that would bring you motivation.