I hate the famous lines, "You are black" or "You are from Africa." Those two lines out of an ignorant man's mouth can ruin my entire day. Being "black" isn't possible because black is the darkest color in the spectrum. You are basically the absence of light itself. For most people that know me, I am a light shade of brown. Probably the lightest brown you can be in the ethic group I am from (which is pretty rare). To be black is to admit to an invisible shackle that locks around your ankle. You are mentally accepting a fate of indentured slave-hood and most people find pride in a color that can't even exist in someone's pigment.
If you were to go to a famous all "black" school and you were to look around, we could all agree that everyone there would be some shade of brown. Even the inhabitants of an African tribe can't be the color "black," and people that are of European descent can't be "white." These colors don't make sense in the year 2016, and yet we still use them to label everyone into one category. How can you call a grown man a color that isn't even 40 shades close to his actual skin color? It is actually a little insulting in my case, and I know the same can't be said for a lot of people from my ethnic group, but I can say that it is offensive when I tell people to just call me "light-skinned" or "Moorish American," but yet they still call me black or African (I am not black or from Africa, for the people that don't know.)
Lastly, it is hard to find a job when the only box you can check on a application is "African American" for anyone who looks like me. It's like being born and bred into a box of crippling inequality. All I was taught was to hate my skin tone when I was tossed out to the world. Then I was turned around later on in my teens to wear a label of color like a shirt. First you want me to have hatred for the brown skin I was given and now you want me to label everything as "black and beautiful." This color should not control your life or define you as a human being. You are the master of your own fate and what color you are should never stop you from succeeding.
