When we are first born into this world, we are born clean from experience. As absurd as this may sound, when we’re born we are quite similar to a new pair of shoes: new pair of white high-top converse free of marks, no different from any other pair in the shoe shop. As time goes on, it begins to pick up marks and stains from different places and different experiences. On your shoes, you have a huge smudge of dried mud from the time you went tailgating with your friends before the big game. Your white converse also has rubber tears because you forgot to bring hiking shoes when you hiked up the Colorado mountains with your best friend. Oh and you can’t forget the green grass stain on the left shoe from the time you slipped in the wet summer grass chasing your joyful dog around the yard. Even though this pair of converse is worn out and gross, they’re filled with memories, and well, they’re yours, flaws and all. They can never be compared to the other box of converse in the stores any longer. And as absurd as that seems, that is how we are as individuals.

She was a girl who grew up in a medium-sized town. The town was big enough that you wouldn’t know everyone’s personal business but yet small enough to see familiar faces everywhere you went. In this town there were all sorts of people; this wasn’t the kind of town you could box into a category. And in this town was her. Some may call her your normal suburban girl, but she was far from it. She was similar to the other girls, yet still very different. Like the shoes, she had different things that made her, her. Like most girls she liked Taylor

Swift, but only because she lost her first love sophomore year and that was the only thing that helped her cope. She was also very passive, but very bold. She’d stand up for what she believed in but wouldn’t let that turn into aggression. She was also nice to everyone because she was bullied growing up and she knew the effects of that. She was crazy about nature because being in nature and really paying attention to it made her realize that there was a God, a God that kept her calm when there was nothing more than havoc in the world. Throughout her life, someone or something made her like this. Some may have similar traits, but there is no one out there exactly like her.

As humans, we always feel the need to give something a name because if it doesn’t have a name or category, to us, it doesn’t exist. From early on, this girl was categorized, categorized into being not “black” enough to be black or as a girl who behaves as a white girl. She humbled herself to others because she didn’t see the point in violence, but in their eyes, she was nothing more than a coward. The other black girls continued to make fun of the way she was. The accents she pronounced her words with, and the way her body moved awkwardly when she attempted to dance.

“You’re black, how the hell can you not dance,” they’d say as she’d try to join in and replicate the newest dance craze.

She never knew being born African American came with a magical dancing gene. She never knew being African American came with any traits other than a dark tone to your skin, and hair that was more course than others. Maybe even some scientific slight variations in body

structure. But honestly, what more could there be to the color of your skin? She learned at an early age that there was so much complexity to this subject of color and race.

As I said earlier, we as humans like to categorize and put names to things. Following our natural tendencies we created this thing called race. Race is a way of grouping based on nothing more than physical characteristics. If we were being realistic, race was and is just a way to divide, categorize, and rank each other. Some races in our society being more superior to the next. It was like the lighter you were, the more beautiful, the more intelligent, the more everything in general you were considered. Everything positive. In this system, her personality type didn’t fit the personality of being black. I guess to the world it was impossible for a black girl to have loveable traits. So to them, she was the black girl who acted white.

Over time, she began to hate the color if her skin and she herself started to believe the stereotypes. Who could blame her, it was something that was taught to her and that is taught to all of us at a very young age. She began to enjoy being considered “one of the good ones.” Even though being herself was all she ever knew, she took being “one of the good ones to the next level”. She aimed to erase anything that could ever tie her back to being categorized as a stereotype black. She had to play out the part of the “typical white girl” better than the white girls themselves. She knew if she slipped up she’d be labeled as “ghetto” or “ratchet” quicker than 2.5 seconds. But if a white girl carried those traits it was acceptable. She could never just be herself fully her without worrying about slipping up. This continued on for numerous days. She made it her identity. She was so blind by society that she couldn’t see the absurdity of her and everyone ideas.

One day she decided to wear a floral dress to school because dressing up she felt confident and on top of the world. That feeling was important because all her life she struggled

with loving herself. Having a normal meaningless conversation with one of her peers, her peer turned to her and said:

“You always dress like a white girl”

“How so?” She immediately questioned her peer.

*Silence*

She spoke again after no response, “well I don’t see you walking around wearing a sombrero.”

My fellow Hispanic classmate turned around in anger, and spoke absolutely nothing. That was the first time I stood up for myself regarding this issue. That day I decided to stop allowing people to tell me what I am and what I’m not. I’m an individual who has flaws and beautiful traits. I cannot be boxed into a category. I am an individual and there is nobody out there that is exactly like me. The things I’ve seen, encountered and experienced has built me up to the girl I am today.

Through these experiences I learned a lot about myself, and a lot about this big world we live in. The color of my skin is black, but that doesn’t mean I’m required to act or not act a certain way. It doesn’t mean I need to surround myself around a certain group. I’m not expected to be anything but myself, and neither are you or anybody else in this world. Don’t let other humans set the standard of what’s right or wrong. Or what’s beautiful and what’s unpleasant

Don’t live in the life in the preset limits of our society. Who is another human to define life for you? But regarding race, we need to remember that there are no biological facts behind race. Get to know people for who they are and not who society calls them to be. I was socialized but my environment not by the definitions made by the people in the world we live in. If we only see people as colors and not actual people we’ll miss out on so much in life. There’s nothing wrong in being diverse and different from your neighbor. As they always say the world would be so boring if we were all the same.