Dear Person Who Told Me That I Don't Know What It Is Like To Be Black,

Hello, It's me the person you brutally offended with your incompetent comment. You see I'm one of those lucky few who people swoon over how cute my skin tone is when I am younger but then make choose which race they want to be because I am not white nor am I black either so I truly have no "place" in any clique. SO when Black Lives Matter came around people made me feel as though I had no real right to stand up for injustice because "I am not black." So how would I know what it's like to be discriminated against?

Well, let's just begin with the fact that yes, I have a WHITE mother and a BLACK father. Get over it! No, my parents aren't divorced and no, my dad isn't a felon and yes, my younger siblings and I all have the same dad. Just because my parents are together and my mom is white doesn't make me any better than anyone else nor does it have its privileges. In all honesty my siblings and I have to work twice as hard to show that we aren't just another statistic and struggled early on to make friends due to our race because at one point in time we were and sometimes still are the outcast in our friend groups.

You may not realize it but it's people like you who make it harder for me to find a place when all you are ever focused on is the complexion of my skin. Yes I understand some of your very best friends are mixed and you would never intentionally make a comment to sound racist but it doesn't matter if you meant for it to or not. I don't think you will ever understand what it is like to have to explain your whole family history to people in order for them to understand that you aren't Hispanic... you just got lucky and get supper tan in the summer and super pale in the winter.

Being a bi-racial child has difficulties all on its own because by the time you turn 11 you are made to choose a race like it's your fault that you were born mixed with two different races and by the time you are 16 people assume you only like one race because "you only hang out with the white kids". You are frowned upon when you are senior because you choose not to attend a historic black college and are viewed as turning your back on your own kind as if you are no more than your race.

Then you go to college where people ask why you chose your major and they get teary-eyed listening you talk about how your one goal is to help change the way people view bi-racial children and to teach children to see past other religion and race.

You may not see these struggles because you are so focused on your own but next time you may want to think before you tell someone what they can and cannot talk about because I do know what it is like I just chose to voice my opinion to the smart and intelligent instead of wasting my breath on the incompetent. I'm sorry you can't understand that.

Sincerely,

The girl who walked away