Today someone called me an Oreo and said it wasn’t meant as an insult. She smiled at me, looking at my brand new Chuck Taylors in place of the basketball sneakers she was so used to seeing, and said I’m glad you’re not one of those...haha…you’re an Oreo!

But unless she was calling me chocolately delicious with a hint of creamy goodness, I think she was mistaken. Unless she was somehow implying that I am both sweet on the inside and outside and a favorite of the American people, then she just must be mistaken. Unless she was implying that I have a good relationship with milk because I do make sure to keep a lot of dairy in my diet then she just must be mistaken because certainly in this day and age, in “Post-Racial” America, she wasn’t telling me that I am white on the inside and black on the outside.

Certainly she wasn’t telling me that I am any less African than the fathers, mothers and daughters who were dragged away from their homes and forced to lie amongst the feces of other fathers, mothers and daughters for 2-4 months on slave ships. Certainly my grammatically correct sentences don’t wash the centuries of oppression off of my apparently tainted black skin.

Today someone called me an Oreo and I replied, “Yes, I am what I eat and I did have a few cookies for breakfast because yolo but if your idea of complimenting me is telling me that my admirable refusal to fit neatly into the stereotypes that you think define what it means to African American makes me any less black, then, honey, I think perhaps you’re mistaken.

It is people like you, people who imply that African Americans aren’t really Americans because they aren’t capable of basic things like enjoying great literature or writing great stories or I don’t know having dreams that lie outside of professional athletic leagues, that are the equivalent of basic kitchen commodities.

If the only way you can think to compliment me is by erasing some of my history, some of my identity and telling me that I don’t guilt you as much as those other n-African Americans do then maybe, just maybe, it’s not a compliment.