Early in September, kid rapper MattyB released a cover of Cyndi Lauper’s “True Colors.” The music video – featuring MattyB’s younger sister Sarah Grace – quickly soared to hit status and stands at nearly 4.5 million YouTube views.
The song’s words convey how MattyB thinks of his sister and how the entire world should view people with Down Syndrome and other genetic conditions or disabilities.
Here are a few excerpts:
You with the sad eyes, don’t be discouraged. Oh, I realize, it’s hard to take courage in a world full of people. You can lose sight of it all and darkness still inside you makes you feel so small.
Let a person be themselves before we cover our eyes.
Imagine life without the boundaries we create with our pride and opportunities we lose because we judge them inside.
There’s a legacy that we’re leavin’, and it’s greater than us. Cause the truth is that we’re all equal, and the answer is love.
I see your true colors shinin’ through. I see your true colors, and that’s why I love you.
MattyB also sings about treating everyone the same and that, despite acceptance not always being easy, it is always right. He reminds us that we each have our unique challenges that “pressures us to be open to change” and argues that no one should be “hated on because of your DNA.”
“If we’re honest inside and really want to do right, judging others for something they have no control over” is something this young rapper knows is wrong. He says it would “make me less of a man,” and, in his opinion, “the biggest thing I think is standing as a leader.”
Standing as a leader is exactly what 11-year-old MattyB is doing for his little sister and for all people with Down Syndrome. And, as ABC News argues, he may just deserve “the title of World’s Best Brother.”
MattyB and Sarah Grace’s parents – Blake and Tawny Morris – also put together a “behind the scenes” video. In it, they share their advice and encouragement, as well as a few thoughts about Sarah:
She tells us every other day that she wants to be on TV.
Sarah has a unique ability and gifting to bring love and joy to whoever she comes in contact with. And this project gave us an opportunity to share that.
This video reveals how Sarah has the ability to bring others together that might initially feel different about her, based on her disability, but then in the end, she brings love and joy and unity to them all. We might find it true in life sometimes that it may be the very person that is different than us…it is that person, that as we’re kind to her, that we embrace, that also brings change back into our lives and causes us to grow for the good.
These incredible parents honestly admit that Sarah’s Down Syndrome can be “a little more challenging” at times, but they believe that parents should be all of their children’s “biggest advocate.”
As Tawny puts it:
The same color-blind, gender-blind approach that we fight for as Americans should be available to our children with disabilities…
She’s right.
And it needs to start in the womb, because “the truth is that we’re all equal, and the answer is love.”
