A Beautiful Black Struggle Poem by Daniel Chapman

Being Black in America
is waking up already on defense,
before the world has even said good morning.
It's learning early
that innocence has conditions,
that your skin enters the room
before your name does.
We are raised on vigilance—
not paranoia,

Mama watching report cards closer than lullabies,
Daddy teaching survival lessons disguised as talks:

Come home alive.

This isn't fear—
this is inheritance.
See, my skin is not just pigment,
it's a projection screen
where society plays its worst assumptions.
My body is read like a threat
before it's read like a human.

I don't get the luxury of being misunderstood—
only misjudged.
Systemic racism isn't always loud.
Sometimes it whispers through redlined maps,
underfunded schools,
interest rates that say no before you finish asking.

It lives in polluted neighborhoods
where breathing itself feels like a risk,
in opportunities locked behind doors
we were never given the keys to.
And still—

we rise.

That's the part they never fully explain.
Because even under pressure,

we laugh loud.
We dance anyway.
We love deep,
create beauty from broken ground,
turn pain into poetry,
turn rhythm into resistance.

Black joy is not denial—
it's defiance.
It is saying, You will not reduce me to my wounds.
It is choosing to live fully
in a world that profits from our suffering.

This struggle is heavy—
but it is also sacred.
Because every day we survive systems
designed to erase us,
we rewrite the definition of strength.
Being Black in America
is a beautiful struggle—
not because the pain is beautiful,
but because we are.
And we are still here.