It feels like there are two worlds: dark skinned poc and light skinned poc. Though we are all oppressed, I'm not denying that, I feel like the people that fall in the middle don't get recognized enough.
You can either pass for white or you are very clearly Black or Asian or Hispanic or whatever other race or ethnicity.
When people look at me, they obviously see a black kid, but at the same time, all I really know is my "white side".
I pull of braids like a white person, I "have no rhythm" has been said to me by my black father for as long as I can remember, while my twin would start spontaneously singing or dancing along with my Dad in a sudden burst of "soul".
I am not bold or outreaching with the color of my skin, instead I am content and happy in my own little world. I want to learn about different cultures, but I don't really fit into any of them, and I don't have any that I can call my own.
My skin is too dark to be Caucasian, but my skin is too light to blend in with the other side of my family.
When I'm with my Mom I can feel the privilege practically oozing out of her pores as well as the white washed parts of town we love near by.
When I go see my aunt and uncles and cousins in the black part of Virginia, or tether the poorer part near Richmond, I feel the oppression deep in my bones.
I know it's there, I know that that is the part that will forever follow me around just like a dominant gene like I'm learning in biology.
Because that's what I am, a hybrid.
Sure, my mother is white, my Dad is black, but the only thing that will ever really show up on my resume is the fact that I am not, in fact, white.
I am black.
The only thing that will show up is the generational oppression I can't really relate to.
The culture that has been lost long ago when my ancestors were carried over from their homeland that I can't truly feel.
The only thing that will show up, the only thing that anyone will see, is a black person that will never be white.
And I don't feel deserving of it.
I know that there are people that are darker than me, I know that they are more oppressed, more feared, more seen, whether for better or worse.
When I say that "I am black" it feels like I am taking something away from those people that have a more permanent reminder than just a dark tan and curly hair.
I can never pass off as white, my skin is too dark for that, but I will never truly fit in with my counterparts that are black, because my skin is too light.
I know that every single time I will be looked at first. I will always be seen before the person next to me with darker skin, with dreads, with traditional clothes. I will always be seen first because I have curly hair, but it is "acceptable". I will always be seen first because my skin isn't "threatening". I will always be seen first because my clothes are "normal". I will always be seen first because I am a white person's vision of what black should be.
But I also know that I will not be seen if the person next to me is white. I will not be seen if the person next to me has straight golden brown hair. I will not be seen if the person that stands next to me has a pointed nose. I know for a fact I will not be seen if the person that stands to my side, as my so called "equal", looks like the person standing in front of me, observing us.
At the same time though, through all of this, that person that is standing in front of me, isn't actually there.
And that's the worst part, isn't it?
The feeling that I am lesser, but still more than others is so engrained, in every one of us, that the person that was standing in front of me, is really just me all along.
The person that was standing in front of us is how all of us see the world, that is what is "normal".
Everyday while I feel like I don't belong, at the end of it all I also have to realize that that is how I am supposed to feel, because that is how society wants me to feel.
