~Throughout the entry there will be songs I listened to especially when I was younger to cope~
People's idea of being black is a mystery I will never be able to understand. From a young age I have always been referred to as an "oreo" or hearing my peers comment that certain people despite not being black acted blacker than me. I always found it strange how there was a specific idea of being black. I was constantly told who I wasn't and not who I could be.
Read more: Expectations not met
It made me feel hated and somewhat like an outcast because wherever I went I didn't feel accepted. Even my mother would tell me how I should act as a black man but that only made me rebel even more. It made me hate who I was and I wanted to be different so badly that it caused others to denounce my blackness even more. I felt as though I couldn't win with who I was. Of course throughout life I started to see how this affected my self-image and I have learned from that but the insecurities are still there. The saddest part is the image that people may imagine in their mind when they think of black people can come from television or media.
Many shows depict black people trerribly or the nuance of certain television shows is not understood by those that are young. Causing confusion and leading people to believe that black people act a certain way without explaining why some black people may act that way. The depictions of black people and their actions in these shows defined what it meant to act black for me. I would actively try to avoid those certain actions or make fun of those actions without understanding how they came to be. These things that black people get made fun of for such as improper grammar are effects of being enslaved for years. I was never able to understand these things as a kid and looking back at how ignorant I was genuinely causes me pain. These depictions still affect me today as I think "don't act a certain way "to avoid any conflict. Of course now I'm very proud of who I am and how I look but the years of thinking that way is gonna take time to heal.
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