I got into a bit of a falling out with a friend. It was one of those things where I still cared about him but we weren't talking. So naturally, like any caring friend, I did a little Instagram stalking just to check up on him to make sure he was OK (he'd been having a rough time of it so I was worried about him). I know social media isn't very reliable when it comes to seeing how someone is REALLY doing but it made me feel better to at least see him.

That is until I saw him with someone else.

It's not that I didn't want him to have friends. I want him to be happy but... there was something about him, a white person, with a white girl that bothered me. I felt this pang in the pit of my stomach and tension in my neck as the familiar thought tumbled into my head once again: Is it because I'm black? Could that be why it's so easy for him to stop talking to me? It felt stupid to think. It feels absurd to write. But when you're black, you have that kind of thought. When you're black, you always seem to have that thought lurking around in your head.

When I catch someone staring at me too hard for too long, when I see someone continually glance back when I walk behind them, when I'm in a store and I feel the sales associates watching me: is it because I'm black? It is exhausting trying to convince people I am not a stereotype. And it's demoralizing to hear someone say I don't "act" black. As if my personality somehow clashes with racial identity. As if being a reserved person and not using slang when I talk somehow disqualifies me from being black.

And God, how I hate that awful guilty feeling of thinking I only received an accomplishment because I'm black. Not for my work ethic or intelligence or skill but for something as trivial and insignificant as the color of my skin and my "ethnic" features. That thought is a self-esteem killer. It takes every accomplishment I've received, wraps it up with a bow, pats me on the head like a naive child and whispers in my ear "you don't deserve this" before handing me the prize.

I'm awestruck that before me, things were worse. Not so many greats ago, a family member was enslaved. Not so long ago, my grandma experienced the bitter realities of blatant racism. I'm lucky. I've never been called crude names or feared for my life. But just because things are better doesn't make what I and every other stigmatized minorities face right. I shouldn't have to second guess my accomplishments and I shouldn't have to hear people question my race because I do not fit an inaccurate stereotype. And I shouldn't have to fear that the color of my skin somehow interfered with my friendship.

To reference Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I have a dream that one day, I will live in a nation that will not make me choose between my personality or racial identity and can judge me, not by the color of my skin but, by the content of my heart.