“You’re the whitest black man I know.” I think I’ve heard that said to me more than anybody else in this country save for Ben Carson. To me it’s by far the most disrespectful and ignorant thing that can also be said to me. I also believe that people thinking this way and thinking this okay to say to anyone , further shows several issues we have in this country when it comes to race. While I am proud to be black and proud of how far black people have come in America, that ultimately doesn’t define who I am, I believe all people are so much more than the race outside. Even the great Dr. King once said to not judge a man by his color but by the content of his character and to understand my character you have to know what I come from.
I was born in North Carolina on December 30th, 1996. Shortly after that I moved to Northern Virginia and lived there for up to around 12 or 13, till my parents got divorced and I ended up living with my mother in a town called East Meadow, in Long island, NY. In East Meadow I was one of very few black people that attended the school and while I don’t have exact figures, I can tell that the school was very predominantly white, with other races in small numbers when compared. This was the first time I truly saw something like this growing up, as living in Northern Virginia I saw a very high diverse area with numbers much closer together when it came to blacks, whites, Hispanics etc. Now did something like this matter to me as a kid? Not really, I never thought about it.
I never and still don’t look at anybody different because of their race, but because I liked things like hockey, baseball, rock music, and musicals, people did and still look at me differently because of mine. Why anybody expects me to act or think a certain way because of my skin color I think is a shame. We all have brains we can like and appreciate whatever we want regardless of who we are on the outside. Often it makes me laugh when I hear this insult today because it shows that person doesn’t really know me. Example being I actually love hip-hop music, just not today’s hip-hop music and frankly after seeing that XXL freshman 2016 cypher I don’t know how anyone else can either. I grew up listening to Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, Kanye, Eminem, and through my brothers was able to learn about the likes of Biggie and Tupac. Come talk to me when anyone new is just as good as them. Want to know why I listen to the likes of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix? My father of course, who plays bass on his spare time and taught and showed me a lot about old school music whether it be Jazz, Blues or R&B and that love has continued to today.
There is nothing wrong with being open-minded and I personally think if so many of us weren’t so scared to try or look at new things from different perspectives that would make this world a much better place. There is nothing wrong with being proud of who we are or where we come from, but there is also nothing wrong with being our own person and remembering that there are two things people sometimes won’t or can’t see, that is our minds and our souls.
