Franchesca Ramsey and the MTV Decoded team have produced a number of revolutionary, relevant videos within the past couple years on issues of race, gender and sexual orientation. They’ve conquered issues that people all over the world struggle with each and every day. Last week, while mindlessly scrolling through Facebook, I stumbled upon a video post from a girl I used to sit by in one of my university gender studies courses. If I hadn’t already deemed this girl’s opinions and posts as “interesting,” the title “You CAN’T sound white!” would have easily been enough to intrigue me to press play. Listening to these people of color discuss their own struggles with racial assumptions and expectations reminded me of my own journey to discover that “educated ≠ white.”
As a black girl from the suburbs of Maryland, this entire video is undoubtedly the story of my life. Yet I know I’m not the first or last kid of color to grow up and constantly be compared to their favorite snack time cookie. I’m not the only person to have the fact that you don’t fit the textbook negative stereotypes be presented as a compliment, as if that’s something you should wear with pride for all your white friends and their parents to see.
At 7 years old, my love for the written word was almost too obvious as told by the Britney Spears diary and the tattered copy of Matilda I would drag around with me wherever I went. At 13, I wore brand name polos (popped collar never optional), plaid shorts, and obnoxiously matchy bows in my hair while secretly blasting Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance from my video iPod on the back of the school bus. My entire adolescence was spent listening to people tell me over and over again that because of the music I listened to, the way I dressed, the honors classes I excelled in, and most importantly the way I talked meant that I wasn’t really black, although my complexion and entire ancestry begged to differ. Such backlash doesn’t just come from those pale skinned and too ignorant to understand that it’s physically impossible to sound like a color. The majority of the criticism was unsurprisingly born from those who looked most similar to myself.
“When you hear it in your own community it’s an insult because it’s another way to say you don’t belong here.”
There is an entire generation of black kids who continually struggle to find balance because, to us, we’ve never identified more than with the concept of “every black ‘you’re not black enough’ is a white ‘you’re all the same.’” Not unlike Franchesca, I was all too often the little girl too nervous or afraid to speak up and out about my interests to others, particularly members of my own family. I never truly understood how much I was an outcast in my own bloodline until they blatantly told me so.
This is how it all starts: a dangerous beginning leading to a tragic ending. We make little girls and boys of color feel like they don’t belong simply because the things that make them happy don’t fit into this tiny box that — ironically — the entire history of white society has been forcing upon us since practically the dawn of time. In leading by such example, we prove to them time and again that there’s only one way to be black. We limit their choices of who they can and want to be. We suffocate their hopes and shackle their dreams; no need for the academy to limit representation, we’ve already graciously done it for them. So before you throw me or any other person of a color a backward compliment, think about what you’re doing and all the creative potential you’re stifling. And remember, “no matter how I talk, I’m always black” and nothing you say or do can ever change that.
