confessions of an oreo

...am i Black enough?

Does my disposition surprise you? 

If so, I would advise you to realign your thinking.

That inkling you have in the back of your brain 

Making the very odd claim that we are not the same

Ignore it. 

My kinks and curls contain that same blue magic

Bought at Sally’s because CVS didn’t have it.

I don’t sound like anything

I sound like me

This me changes day by day to varying degrees

Just because I don’t walk like you

Talk like you

Doesn’t mean I’m not you.

When they see me they see you

I may not know you from Adam

But don’t you forget that we’re from the same atoms. 

I don’t know who Tom is so please stop asking

I like drums over flats

As a matter a fact

This shouldn’t have to be a matter of fact

As if the box our ancestors were once shipped in still contains us

As if we can’t get new packaging

We are not lacking

Don’t you know that I would die for you?

Cry for you?

Riot in the streets for you?

Not just for you but for me too

For my sista standing behind you

The auntie to the left of you

And for my cousin right in front of you 

confessions of an oreo...am i Black enough?

Oreo? Delicious sandwich-style cookie with a sweet creamy center or a rude term for those of us who don’t use ebonics in our everyday speech? We’re deemed Black on the outside and white on the inside. So when people called me an oreo, I knew they weren’t referring to me as a yummy treat. There was a time in my life when I was called an oreo so often that you would have thought it was part of my government name. 

I was called this by classmates, friends, and even family members. I was deemed as not Black enough. But what is enough? I couldn’t just have the skin color to be considered Black by the Black community. While at the same time, I had to defy all assumptions people had about Black folks in the white community. 

While in middle and high school, my town still participated in the busing program. For those of you that don’t know what that is, it’s when wealthier (whiter) school districts “bussed” in students from poorer (Blacker) school districts so they could receive what is deemed as better education. This is not to say that many students don’t benefit from those programs but it was mostly Back students bussed into my schools. Not only that, but they tended to be put into lower-level classes. Then there was me. I was in all high-level classes and I was from the very small white town these students were bussed to.

And I was judged for that. One kid told my best friend (who is also the daughter of Jamaican immigrants) that he didn’t like me because I acted too white, because I sounded too white. The majority of his interactions with me were on the bus home from school. We didn’t share any classes or hang out outside of school. But because he knew me adjacently through my friend, he knew the level classes I took and the extracurricular activities I did, I was not deemed not Black enough. As if those things, things I enjoyed - learning, field hockey, marching band, and theater - took away my Blackness. 

There was an assumption that I thought I was better than everyone because I was in the higher level classes as a Black girl. That I didn’t want to hang out with the other Black kids. In 8th grade, one kid thought I was uppity and rich because my family went to England. Little did they know my parents saved forever for that trip and we stayed with family the whole time. But that shouldn’t matter. 

My telling you this isn’t to shame these kids. It’s to highlight the constant balancing act I had and still have to play. When did being Black become synonymous with being uneducated, not being able to travel, or not joining the marching band? 

Then there was the other side of it. The side where I was only seen as Black among white folks. The side where in classes, I had to speak for all Black people. I had to be the picture of perfection because remember, I am now the voice of the Black people. It was dealing with the casual racism at every turn. 

In my freshman year of high school, when I asked for a recommendation for honors English, my current English teacher told me I’d probably fit and feel better in the level one or two classes “with people like me”. On its face, you’re probably thinking ‘Well, Natalia maybe she just didn’t think you’d be able to handle the class load.’ That would be an easy assertion given that the recommended grade for honors English was a B+ but I had an A-. I took the assessment to get into honors and passes with flying colors. The following year, I passed honors English with an A. 

During a study session for my AP History class, a classmate told our teacher, “I don’t know why Black people are still complaining. We gave them basically everything.” As if asking for basic necessities was an incredible burden for everyone that wasn’t Black.

I was constantly balancing between only being seen for the color of my skin and yet not being Black enough. As I’ve said many times before, being different kinds of Black just became cool. I couldn’t even tell you what was acceptable Black when I was growing up but I knew that I wasn’t it. I didn’t fit into that mold. I felt out of place in my school and my family.

My favorite show was Gilmore Girls, I listened to more pop music than rap, and I played the mellophone for my first two years of marching band - to be fair, that wasn’t my best decision. But that made me different. But I guess it didn’t make me Black?

~

The concept of Blackness itself is very interesting. Blackness is more than skin color. It is more than tragedy and poverty. It’s an essence. As Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Patricia Pinky Ndlovu put in their piece, The Invention of Blackness on a World Scale, what we know of Blackness was created out of a distressing history. 

“Blackness emerges within the history of racism, enslavement, and colonisation as a badge of sub-humanity and inferiority. Two concepts – dismemberment and re-membering – enable this chapter to empathetically make sense of the technologies of invention of ‘blackness’ as a marker of sub-human, if not deficient, identity, as well as to appreciate African and black people’s struggles for self-reconstitution and resistance to dehumanising Eurocentrism.”

I think for a long time, the identity Black folks found was in our struggle. While that is something that binds us it shouldn’t be something that defines us. We are more than our struggle but a tool of whiteness is to make us think we’re not. So often do movies and TV depict Black folks only lifting up one person in their communities - that person is the one that came “make it.” And when we were shown Black folks in places of power or privilege it often accompanied the idea that they no longer wanted to identify with Blackness. They looked down on other Black people. They were only Black in skin color but not identity. This problematic way of thinking spilled over into real life. 

This way of thinking left little space for the Black kids that liked cosplaying or playing the flute. There was seldom an invitation for those of us who read comic books or listened to emo music. It left little space for those of us who grew up in whiteness. Our mannerisms didn’t match theirs. Those were deemed things white folks do. As if our Blackness has not influenced every sector of culture and thought. 

From the United States’ beginning, Black became synonymous with bad, ugly, uneducated, lazy, ungrateful, etc. Over that same amount of time, negative stereotypes about us grew, but they were because of the situations whiteness put us in. Why do southern Black folks eat ham hocks and chitlins? Slaves were given scraps. It’s common lore that Black folks weren’t allowed to have vanilla ice cream except for the fourth of July because white folks deemed it too “pure” for us. Why is my last name Abrahams? It seems people have forgotten Jamaica was just another stop on the boat.

Along the way, I think we as a Black community, embodied these things that were told and shown to us. I often thought to myself, am I Black enough? Am I really an oreo? People would say “O Natalia’s not really Black, Black.” I would laugh it off and pretend I knew what they were talking about. But I didn’t.

I had two very Black parents - who were immigrants no less. For a good chunk of my childhood, they made chicken foot soup every Saturday, as every good Jamaican household is want to do. We seasoned our food well. My mother played Luther and Mary every weekend when we had to clean the house from top to bottom. My family is permanently on CP time. Random relatives ended up at my house at any time. I saw people follow my dad around stores. I had perfected the art of code-switching. I got the talk - no, not that one - but the other talk that all little Black children get. Wasn’t I Black? Wasn’t I Black enough?

~

With the rise of Black icons: Issa Rae, Serena Williams, The Honorable Ketanji Brown Jackson, Ava Duvernay, bell hooks, Lizzo, etc, and to the loss of Black lives: George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tamir Rice, Oluwatoyin Salau, Philando Castile and countless others - I wonder what it means to be Black now? Each of these names and the ones I didn’t mention, faced extreme backlash. Regardless of what they did or continue to do, they are beaten on because of their Blackness. 

Issa Rae’s work has allowed us to see ourselves in TV in a way that hasn’t been mainstream since the ’90s. Mrs. Jackson has shown us what authority looks like in the highest court rocking her sister locks. Lizzo is the embodiment of self-love. Ahmaud Arbery showed us the dangers of jogging. Breonna showed us the death in simply sleeping. Oluwatoyin showed us the pain of speaking. Does being Black mean to die? Or does being Black mean to live?

There is something inherently unique to being Black. There is so much power in it. And every day, I wake up proud to be a Black woman - not just in skin color but in identity. What I do is inherently Blackness because I am. 

One of my pastors - a Black, female, queer pastor with a buzz cut, because her Black is valid too - once said during a sermon and I’m paraphrasing here, “Every time you see a Black person you’re witnessing a resurrection.” Blackness is being born to live again.