Transcript of Eeda's spoken word piece "Fade to White

1. Fade to White by Ee’da
My mama used to bleach me, for years he put creams on my skin that used to itch me but I just
let her, ‘cuz those kids used to diss me.
See, Mama grew up in an era where fairer was better. She thought my future would be
brighter if my skin was a few shades lighter .
So I watch my mama sift out the portions of the powder crystals and mix it in with the cream,
like mixing the ordinary with the dream then rubbing it in the tiny crystals slicing into the skin
so the cream can work its magic from within and on it goes, till this day…
In many parts of the brown world, people trading melanin, for a new sheen for new skin,
wrapped in plastic cellophane the same, toxic routine.
And when I was a child, the active agent, hydrogen peroxide my eyes watering choking up ,
inside, outside from the smell of the chemicals and then later on, I learnt of the link between
lungs and skin, like ink, soaking thru when the paper is thin Or like sunray, saying to
moonbeam, “You shine because of me.'”
But I never blamed my mama ‘cuz how could you blame anyone who didn't know any better
she just wanted more for her daughter cos back then, people didn't put two and two together
and, you know what? . . . They still don't.
But they will always respond to society's misguided whims disguised as dreams like a chemical
reaction to the mental colonization like Asian’s fixations with Caucasians, fixations with -
solariums.
White girls wanting half-black babies, black girl wanting half-white babies, and girls just wanting
husbands with beamers and Mercedes.
They're bending different shapes into young minds to fit the box different boxes packaged for
different times but a box is still a box a box labelled with mixed messages.
So that, even our sense of identity becomes the property of those, whose business it is to make
us feel like, we need to something more than we are, to make us feel like we are less than we
are. To make us feel . . . like we are never enough.
So we keep buying their stuff, and they're so good at it we don't even realize that they're doing
it.
This business of disconnecting you from you the real you, the perfect in your imperfection you.

2. But it seems to me that life puts you right in it, to help you see right through it so teach yourself
all they never taught you love all your strengths and all your weaknesses let all your breaths be
your witnesses cos now, I love me for all the shades of me:
The cocoa-butter brown chocolate taste of me ,the breaking out from the detox, the pimple,
pox marks on me, the ingrown, outgrown hairs on me, the stubbly, wobbly strong and sensitive
sides to me.
And I've learnt that we're put in the line of fire to lead us to inquire into human nature and into
life.
So don't blame your circumstance just find your signature dance ‘cuz everything happens for a
reason.
And let that reason be your reason to keep forgiving and to keep loving, then let that love be
reflected in the eyes of those looking back at you.
Let that love be the mirror, you see your own beauty shining through.