I’ve done a rather good job at erasing the majority the of my middle school years from my mind. Gone are the memories of being “edgy,” trying to fit in with the popular kids and coming dangerously close to going through an emo phase. But there’s still one memory that remains in rather vivid in my mind, that memory is my old nickname “oreo.” To those of you who may not know, oreo is a name given to black people who are perceived to act white, or being black on the outside and white on the inside. Clever? Maybe. Funny? Not so much.

Throughout middle school and high school, I would often get comments about how “different” I was or how I was never quite what people expected me to be. Back then, I would laugh it off whenever my friends or someone else bought this up. I had gotten used to it being a joke, but when it became reality, I didn’t know what to do.

There was the time in high school when some friends and I were planning on going to the movies together, but one of the girls’ parents wanted me to call them first... We talked over and somehow came to conclusion that I would be the one to talk to her parents. I called them night and we had a pleasant discussion arranging the details of the outing. On the day we were all supposed to go see the movie, as we were heading into the theatre, my friend mentioned to me how her parents had been surprised when they actually met me, because they hadn’t expected me to be black.

There was the other time in high school when a guy bumped into in the hallway and caused me to drop my things. He apologized as he helped me to collect my belongings off the ground and congratulated me on not snapping him like “other” black girls would. Even things my friends started to say slowly began to get me. Like the time I was walking to class with my nose stuck in a book and ran into one of my friends and he told me that he couldn’t even consider me a black person because of the way I acted and spoke, and he meant it as a compliment. Which, to me, is worse than hearing that as an insult.

In both these instances, I didn’t know how to react. I was used to being told that I didn’t act like “other” black girls as a joke, but the first time it wasn’t a joke? That was different. The first time I’d heard it from people who didn’t know me? That was different. It wasn’t funny that time, nor was it something I could brush off. At the moment, reality hit me like a cold, cold, bucket of water. I realized that it wasn’t funny anymore, and that it never had been.

For the first time, I stopped and asked myself, “Why?” Why was it that certain aspects about my life, stripped my identity away from me? The answer is simple: Stereotypes. I don’t think it’s any secret that in society, we have these preconceived notions of what certain people are like. We create these boxes to place people into them based on their gender, sexuality, skin color. It’s almost as if there’s a checklist of things we have to mark off before we fit in the category we’re told we belong in and if we don’t tick off all or most of the boxes, we don’t fit in.

For a while, I even started to question myself. Was I really an “oreo?” Was I really “acting white?” Was I actually “confused?” Was I supposed to be sticking to the status quo? One by one, I came to answer to no to all of these questions, and instead started asking, “So what?”

So what, I have more dubstep and rock on my playlist than any other genre?

So what, I keep to myself and would rather spend my nights curled up with my dog instead of going out?

So what, I like to play Skyrim and Fallout?

So what, I’m not a Christian?

So what?

It’s time for us to broaden our perspectives of how diverse people can be and how many different walks of life we all come from. We need to stop putting people down for the sake of lifting others up.

I’m no better than the black girl does like a lot of rap. Or the black girl who likes to go out and laugh with her friends. Or the black girl who doesn’t like gaming at all. Or the black girl who is a Christian. Case in point, black women are just as diverse as any other group of people and need to be seen as such.

Regardless of all the stereotypes, I am and always will be a black woman. I’m not an oreo. I’m not “one of the good ones.” I’m me, I’m black, and I’m damn proud of it.