Brotha Brotha, I ask you
What is your perception of beauty?
Your mother, strong, black, everlasting
Generation after generation enduring cruelty at the hands of your
In-Laws
Brotha I ask you
Did you not weep for your mother's mother?
Did you not weep for your sisters?
Will you not weep for your daughters?
Again, what is your perception of beauty?
Do you remember when she called you nigger boy?
Don't step your black ashy feet on my floor boy!
Took your mother from you to help suckle her own
Do you remember, nigger boy?
Don't dare look her way, from a tree you'll sway
A whole community burned to ashes at the hands of your 
In-Laws
Called your father boy and your mother girl
Shackled you, bound you in chains
Beat you into ignorance and poverty
Left you there to believe that you were worth nothing
But, beauty came
Black as night, bearing the world on her shoulders
Raising your sons and daughters
Holding you up each time you were beat down at the hands of your
In-Laws
Even when her knees began to buckle and her breath became ragged
She held you up and there you stayed
So, what is your perception of beauty?
Did you reach out your hand to her
Pulling her until she stood on a pedestal?
Did you hold her down like she held you down?
Did you help take the world from her shoulders,
Embrace her blackness and finally take your place as leader?
What is your perception of beauty? Speak up!
Explain to her why she is neglected, rejected and seldom reflected in 
  eyes of her sons
Is your mother so repulsive, your sisters and your daughters,
That you regard them as unworthy of your love?
Is it too painful to look upon the scars placed there at the hands of your
In-Laws
Tell me brotha, did you forget about us?
When they ask you why, do you feign ignorance,
Pretend as if it's her attitude, her lack of aptitude?
Scared to acknowledge your own weaknesses
Ignoring that fact that she continues to bear your burdens on her back
Claiming you have searched but been denied her greatness
Brotha, today I say to you
Beauty is not lost, so why is she still waiting 
to be found by the black men whom she continues to hold down?