I was called a nigger in the seventh grade and instead of gathering myself for a retaliatory attack I turned my back. I AM BLACK.      

I grew up in orange county a place where the color white is of an innumerable quantity. A place where counting the number of blacks I see on the street is leisurely activity. Each one simply a tally mark on a page. my race is a cage.     

barred by the way I am meant to behave by the way my hair be either straight or shaved. Is there no other way to live within the boundary of an ivory society than to let the media and tvs tell our beautiful black babies that you are either us or them no grey area to be spoken for either real or pretend. And me 17 still wondering why it wounds like the skin splitting crack if the whip when my best friends say "you're not really black".

As if my place in my own race is to be determined by the amount of which I abide  by a prehistoric stereotype. My ability to function socially in my environment is entirely dependent on how successfully I can mirror my surroundings. An environment that told me self deprecation based on my ethnicity was comedy. As if the color of my skin is something I need to be excused for. excused, for I was bred to breathe in fried chicken and watermelon and reject them. My identity formed on whether or not I loved poultry or a fruit whether I drank red orange purple blue, kool aid. I do. As if these were the markers of an oafish lifestyle a caveman's tattoo,  is the theory that humans of non African descent are supposedly 4% Neanderthal something you've heard too?

Now I am a racist. No I am merely a slave to what race is. Areyon slavery has been abolished for ages.

Has it.

My parents raised me to believe that I am limitless in a world where I seem to be consistently limited. My people and I strive to be so much more in a world that offers us so little.

A world that expects so little. the white man says save the incredible for the rest of us. the best of us. for, the best is us...   

I am a person of color in world that defines me as the absence of it.