She walked through the hallway with her hands on her backpack straps, minding her own business. She didn’t know she was being followed. As she went to the stair door, an older girl and her friends rushed through the door in front of her, pushing her to the back of the line. She finally started up the stairs behind the girls. As she got to the seventh step, one of the girls in front of her stopped and turned around.
As she tried to get around the stopped girl, she was pushed off the step, as she started to fall back, she grabbed for any thing within reach. That thing was the older girl in front of her, the girl who had maliciously pushed her off the middle of a flight of stairs. They fell, and the girl’s friends ran to help their fallen member. She ran to the safest place she knew of after that, her administrator’s office.
She pounded on the door, hoping Mrs. A. was in there.
Mrs. A. was there, and she let her in. She told her about what had just happened, about how Alexandra had just pushed her off the stairs with a driving intent to harm her. Mrs. A. sent for Alexandra, telling her she could wait in the office next door or go to class. She was crying and didn’t want the other seventh graders in her history class to see her tears, so she decided to wait in the office until Mrs. A. came to get her.
Thirty minutes passed, when finally, Mrs. A. peeked her head in to get her. They went back into her office and sat down. She asked why Alexandra had done such a hateful act. Mrs. A. showed her the notes from the meeting with Alexandra, highlighted on the paper were words that read in all bold: “She isn't black enough, and I was gonna put her in her place!”
Mrs. A. hung her head and said that Alexandra received a week’s suspension for the “hate crime.” As she left the office, she felt even more displaced than she had before, she was more confused than she was before this whole event took place. With all the other things happening in her world: her parents on the brink of divorce, the feeling of being overweight, people constantly sending her messages throughout class that she should die, not having anyone to turn to, this was another thing to add to the list: “Not black enough”.
This story is about me.
This was me in the seventh grade. I had no friends, people hated me because I was black, but light-skinned, I was five feet and eight inches tall, I was two hundred and seventeen pounds of solid weight, I was one of the smart kids who worked their way into the advanced classes while the other kids in my demographic stayed in the lower level classes.
I was an outsider.
The thing that has stuck with me the most is what was highlighted on that paper in Mrs. A.’s office that day after her meeting with Alexandra, " Not black enough."
What did that mean?
I didn’t identify with any race at that time and I choose when necessary where I need to fit according to the situation.
Let me explain.
My parents were born in Panama. My mother moved to the U.S. when she was two years old. My mother’s parents were born in Panama. Her mother’s parents were from Panama and Jamaica, her father’s parents were from Panama and somewhere in Europe, he had super light skin, dark blonde hair, and hazel eyes. My father’s parents were from Panama and their parents were from Panama, and their parents were from Jamaica and France. My sister is darker than I am; she looks black for the most part. I on the other hand, got granddad and mom’s genes, I’m lighter than your average black person.
People ask me all the time if I’m mixed – which gets annoying when it’s followed by “… because you’re pretty for a black girl.” That phrase boils my blood, like black girls aren’t pretty if they don’t have mixed features (gets off soapbox).
I never identified with any particular ethnicity; I usually just marked Hispanic and black on Scantron sheets for standardized testing. My dad speaks Spanish; it's his first language, and all of my relatives speak Spanish, most of them as a first language too. I never understood where I fit in as a first generation American who didn’t speak a lot of Spanish.
As I got older, I would use my conversational Spanish to initiate my right of passage in the Hispanic community, use my color to prove myself in the black community, and use my light complexion and family tree in the white community. I had no place, and it was frustrating.
For years, I was like a chameleon: I had what I needed to blend in, but what color was I really? It wasn’t until I entered my adult years that I took on the mindset that it didn’t matter anymore where I fit in. I just claimed black as my ethnicity, and when it really mattered, I’d let people in on my full ethnic history.
People still assume I’m mixed, but I don’t answer to that, because I don’t answer to a color, I answer to my name. I don’t have to identify with anything at all because nobody cares.
What matters is what I present.
If I present myself with no class, or respect, people are going to treat me that way, and if I present myself with grace and dignity, it won’t matter what color I am on the outside to people worth my time. I have slowly, and am still, learning to not color myself to fit in.
As long as there is racism in this world, there will be issues with my color. It’s all over social media, the news, in every community, and even in the church. White people have a problem with black people, black people have a problem with white people. Hispanics have a problem with black people and white people and vice versa, and it happens with every race towards every other race and within every race.
Dark skins don’t like light skins, Salvadorians don’t like Mexicans, and the list of cultural prejudices go on and on. But what we, including you reading this now, should do, is stop criticizing what we don’t understand, and grow up.
All the little things we say, myself included, that are stereotypical negatives against one another are petty and proof that we need to change. We need to love and accept, not tolerate. We should walk in joy, spreading love and being the peacemakers God has called us all to be.
I hope you read this and are challenged to be a changer of your world.
We are not colors, we are people.
Peace.
