#mpmt

So lately I've been having this overwhelming thought that I'm not dark enough to be deemed "black" by AA standards. And it's so odd because I was raised with the idea that because of the fact that my skin is brown, I must strive to be excellent in everything that I do. That I must be smarter and nicer, more polite and soft spoken, more put together and beautiful. I needed to be an example to the world around me that being AA did not lessen me, that I could do just as well, if not better, than all of my peers. My mom always taught me that I would be judged for my skin tone, that I would need to work harder for anything that I wanted to accomplish, because being a black woman would put me at a disadvantage in the world. And sadly, she was right. I had a teacher that tried to hold me back, citing that I could not read, when in fact I was reading chapter books long before the rest of my class. I have been banned from stores that claimed I stole from them when all I was doing was using the store phone to call my mom after school before I walked home. Then when one of the store workers (an older black man) took his breaks at the time my sister and I usually came around so that he could let us borrow his cell phone, his manager (a white woman that always gave us dirty looks) threatened to fire him for it. I have been handcuffed by the police for crimes that I haven't committed because I "resembled the person" they were looking for and when I asked for the description, I was told "tall, African American, female." I have been called racial slurs and told that my hair is too nappy or too wild to be pretty. And yet, I have been told to my face that I'm not really black. That because my biological father, a man that I have never met and never wish to meet, was white then I have no right to label myself a black woman. That because I am mixed, I do not know what it's like to grow up in a world that judges me for my skin color. That I need to calm down with my "light skint fuckery," as if half of me doesn't exist. And guess what? Those words stuck with me like gum on the bottom of my shoe. I think about it at night when my brain will just not go to sleep or when I do my hair in the morning and no matter what it just wont lay right. Suddenly I am too light to be black, when all my life I've been too dark to be anything but. And I guess this is just me putting all of this out there, hoping that someone will have a bit of advise. Because I have always been raised with the idea that my skin is beautiful no matter what anyone says and right now I feel like its not.