Please don't ask me to speak for an entire race.

One voice is not the voice of an entire race.

On various occasions I've been asked if something offends me, or if I've had an experience when people are trying to prove a point that someone is being too sensitive to an issue.

My experiences do not speak for the experiences of every other person in my race. I can't tell you how it feels how to be black and growing up in the ghetto, because I grew up in the suburbs. I can't tell you how it feels to be a black male being stopped by the police, because I'm a black female. I can tell you what it feels like to be stared at for "talking white." I can tell you what it feels like to be followed around in a store. What I can't do is tell you how it feels to be anything other than what I am.

Please don't ask me to speak for an entire race on issues I may or may not have experienced. I may not have gone through something someone else has, but that does not diminish their experiences in any way. Someone else may not have gone through the things I have personally gone through, and that does not diminish their blackness, or mine, either.

Please don't tell me someone else is being dramatic or people in the news are out of control, because you'll never know what it feels like to be them. And guess what! Neither do I. Why do we all spend so much time judging the actions of others and assuming we know what is best for an entire group of people. Why do we believe that everyone should be living the same exact way we are when the way two people were raised can be completely different.

Don't expect someone to get out of poverty just through "hard work," because you don't know how hard they may be working just to get food on the table, and for them that is the biggest accomplishment they are able to make.

I can't tell you what it feels like to not know where your next meal will come from, and I can't tell you what it feels like to be Michael Jordan living it up in a mansion. Not all black people are as funny as Kevin Hart, and we can't all bust out into the latest dance craze.

Please stop asking me to speak for an entire race, because the truth is -- I can't.