Not Black Enough

Dear My Perspective,

I love pop, rock, punk music. I like to shop at Hot Topic and Hollister Co. Many of my friends are white. I have black friends and biracial friends, but they are just like me. I get good grades in school, and take school serious. I also do not do Ebonics. Well anyways, a couple of "ghetto" acting black girls, told me that i wasn't black enough. I was called "white-washed" and "Uncle Tom" and "Oreo". Sometimes they threaten to beat me up. Saying things like, no matter how "white" I get, I will always be black.

I never denied being black. I am just me. My parents raised me in a home that did not play rap or hip hop. My parents are deadset against the gangsta culture. The black girls say I look down on them. It isn't because they are black. It is because they make a spectacle of themselves with how loud they get.

I like what I like. I don't get how I am not black enough. When I am black!! I don't know how to deal with these girls. What can I do?

Signed,
Oreo

Dear Oreo,

"Not black enough" is a gimmick that is often said by gangsta/ghetto behaving people. Often they lambast those who rise above further than them. They lambast them because not only do they rise above, but they, in their eyes, "adopt" the white way of life in order to get ahead. The problem with this is that, there is no way to being black. Black is a skintone. Black in America means living your life in a skintone that is highly regarded as horrible.

Hanging out with whites, liking music often done by white people, does not make you less black.

Its important to realize now that you can't please everyone in the world, and that you will have to just please yourself. Nothing you do or say will make those group of girls happy. If you give in, they will walk all over you, and you will be unhappy. If you stay the way you are, they will taunt you. All you can do, is enjoy the stuff that makes you happy.

Stand strong, and be who you are, if you show insecurity, then they will know what it takes to make you tick, and that only confirms what they want, and they will continue with their taunting.

so JUST BE HAPPY!!! They can't take who you are away, unless YOU let them!