Quit Calling Me an Oreo: My Blackness is Enough
White-washed, coconut, Oreo – I’ve heard it all. “Head in the books all the time, with your big words, think you’re too good for the rest of us huh?” Actually, no darling I don’t. I’m no better than anyone else – just skin, bones, and flesh with some hair at the top of the head. Human. I guess the difference is that I choose to explore my potential while ignorant folks don’t. Last time I checked that was neither a crime nor a denial of my ethnicity. Who decided what “black” was anyway? Grills, and slang and “whaddup my nigga” doesn’t make you black, after all, a Chinese dude could do all that, laughably perhaps, but it’s not impossible. Is it weave or lacefronts or an obnoxious name like Bon Qui Qui and an attitude to match? I’d really hate to think so.
The only thing that makes us Black people is our skin colour and our collective struggle. That’s it. Sure there are stereotypes: athleticism, large penises, and all that. But if we take these to be the definition of Black then poor Tyrone with his chocolate brown skin, cottony hair, stringy limbs and small genitalia isn’t black huh? Well that’s just ridiculous. If there’s a set-in-stone formula of what constitutes “blackness,” and a black person’s character, attitude and physical attributes don’t add up, well then the logical conclusion is that no matter their skin tone, they’re not black, or at least, not black enough.
I find it tremendously disturbingthat some of my people really think like that. It’s pathetic that they believe that white people have a monopoly on proper English, strong vocabularies, intelligence, self-respect and success. This, dear reader, is mental slavery. No wonder some Blacks are still so bitter about the physical slavery that ripped our ancestors from their motherland. I am not belittling that, but why are we blind to the prison we put ourselves in? We treat English like a disease, academic success like the plague and anyone who embraces either like a traitorous anomaly.
So what, I can’t booty clap, I don’t think I’m a bad bitch, and I’m not ghetto, and truthfully, not a lot of black women are like that. And still this stereotyping persists, pushed on by ignorant black people. Black isn’t an attitude, a clothing style, a dialect, or an accent. Yes, there is history, there is culture and there are traditions, but not every single black person can identify with that. At the end of the day, Black is a race, the colour of my skin. If you think that makes me an Oreo, well that’s all you.
Oh white guys can do "black" too:
