Basically an Oreo
A little bit of both.
Photo by Alyssa Griffith
If you were to split an Oreo precisely down the middle, you would basically be depicting my ethnic makeup.
My mother, a blonde-haired green-eyed beauty, fell in love with my dark-skinned, chocolate-eyed father. The result: a girl with kinky-curled hair and an affinity for straightening what she refers to as “the mop”.
Being equal parts African American and caucasian, it can be hard to find where I fall
into the line of neatly organized groups within society, or difficult to escape raging stereotypes that never fail to circulate through everywhere and everything.
I have spent the majority of my life worried and sometimes even been ridiculed due to the way I portrayed myself.
As a society, we tend to put a strict focus on unnecessary stereotypes.
Much like in the movie Mean Girls, Janis reveals to Cady her organized map of the cafeteria and practically assigned spots that people hold.
While I believe we don’t have a very aggressive atmosphere at LHS, there is no doubt that a decent portion of us follow the clichés and clique-orientated design of high school.
With this in mind, finding a place where I fit in turned out to be more difficult than anticipated. Judgmental eyes would scan my figure in a continuous up and down motion, automatically forming an opinion of a stranger.
The contradictory terms of “You don’t act black enough” to “Why don’t you go pick some cotton?” have both entered my ears after being spit into the air around me. As much as I hate to admit it, I became ashamed of who I was, the color of my skin and the way I acted as a whole.
For a long time, I put all of my energy into regulating the words spoken, the tone that I spoke and the actions I carried out.
Yes, I don’t fit in with the stereotypical image of a young African American girl, or that of a caucasian one. And yes, I have literally no clue how I’m supposed to act, speak, breath or exist.
On the bright side, I’ve realized that a lot of other people are in the same boat as me, slowly rocking with the relentless waves and letting the current take us. We don’t know what we are.
Despite our genetic makeup, skin color, or even moral differences, we all fall into the category of unknowns and are perfectly content with it.
