When I was much younger, I was always told that I was different. My hair was too long, I spoke too proper, or I didn't dress the same way other kids "like me" dressed. I never really understood how it was that I was was supposed to dress, talk, or act, so I just continued to do what I was doing. As I grew older, I came to find out what it was that those other kids my age were getting at. "You act like a white girl!" This was a phrase I heard so often that I could always sense when someone was about to say it. You see, black children my age consistently said this to me so often that I didn't know how I was "supposed to act or what I was supposed to say. Because of this, I continued to put myself around kids that were white; this is where I felt like I fit in. It was not until I entered the tenth grade that I began hanging around people of my same race.
After all the years hearing words that had calloused my skin to sustain such a harsh blow to my self awareness, I had learned to hold my head up high in the face of who I would like to call my "tormentors". Putting myself in the atmosphere where there were more people of my same race was like putting myself on a platform center stage. There was not a day that went by when someone didn't call me white, or someone didn't tell me I talked funny, or someone told me that I wasn't "black enough". My senior year in high school, one of my teachers, a white woman, even said in front of our entire class, "Danica, I need you to act more black. I'm blacker than you are!" Because of all the things I had heard over the years, it didn't even shock me to hear such a thing come from her mouth. It did, however, upset me. It upset me to think that even to generations before my own, I wasn't considered "black enough" for my own race. People outside of my race even thought I wasn't "black enough". Black enough. What is that? I really had to think to myself on this one, because it just didn't seem right that I was cursed to forever be in the skin of a person who everyone says I'm not. But I am. And that's where I am today.
So what is black? What is this color, this race, this creed, that everyone seems to have a different idea of? What is black? Black is me. Black is my race. Black is the young lady I am, the confused girl I was, and the great woman I will be. I am that definition of black, for me. I've realized that no one can compare me to another, so don't anyone dare try. One can't compare to another saying I'm not black enough for this race, because suppose I'm the black enough that everyone else is supposed to amount to? Suppose everyone else isn't adding up to what "black" is? How can anyone say I don't act black? What is there to act about? I AM BLACK. I've come to realize that when people call me white or say that I am "acting white", it may be a form of an insult to them, but to me, it must be a compliment. I am a strong, proper, educated, long-haired, black woman, and if all of these things make me white, hey! It can't be a bad thing.
So as I hold my head up high, making my way as a BLACK WOMAN, the next time someone says, "Danica, you act like a white girl." I might just have to say, "Thanks for the compliment." Because I am a black woman, and I don't need anyone elses definition of what that is to define me.
DrMk
After all the years hearing words that had calloused my skin to sustain such a harsh blow to my self awareness, I had learned to hold my head up high in the face of who I would like to call my "tormentors". Putting myself in the atmosphere where there were more people of my same race was like putting myself on a platform center stage. There was not a day that went by when someone didn't call me white, or someone didn't tell me I talked funny, or someone told me that I wasn't "black enough". My senior year in high school, one of my teachers, a white woman, even said in front of our entire class, "Danica, I need you to act more black. I'm blacker than you are!" Because of all the things I had heard over the years, it didn't even shock me to hear such a thing come from her mouth. It did, however, upset me. It upset me to think that even to generations before my own, I wasn't considered "black enough" for my own race. People outside of my race even thought I wasn't "black enough". Black enough. What is that? I really had to think to myself on this one, because it just didn't seem right that I was cursed to forever be in the skin of a person who everyone says I'm not. But I am. And that's where I am today.
So what is black? What is this color, this race, this creed, that everyone seems to have a different idea of? What is black? Black is me. Black is my race. Black is the young lady I am, the confused girl I was, and the great woman I will be. I am that definition of black, for me. I've realized that no one can compare me to another, so don't anyone dare try. One can't compare to another saying I'm not black enough for this race, because suppose I'm the black enough that everyone else is supposed to amount to? Suppose everyone else isn't adding up to what "black" is? How can anyone say I don't act black? What is there to act about? I AM BLACK. I've come to realize that when people call me white or say that I am "acting white", it may be a form of an insult to them, but to me, it must be a compliment. I am a strong, proper, educated, long-haired, black woman, and if all of these things make me white, hey! It can't be a bad thing.
So as I hold my head up high, making my way as a BLACK WOMAN, the next time someone says, "Danica, you act like a white girl." I might just have to say, "Thanks for the compliment." Because I am a black woman, and I don't need anyone elses definition of what that is to define me.
DrMk
