Moral Monday: I am from the White Side

Do you want to know where I am from? Do you want to know why I am the way I am? Do you really want to know? Like seriously... O.K. cool I just had to make sure.

I am from the White Side. I am from an area that splits the place you live by the color of your skin. It is a thing to know if you are from the area. Outsiders would not know unless informed by the locals. You go to an area and notice that a majority of a certain group of people live within it. You walk a mile down the street and notice that another group of people encompass the area as though it is not big deal. To analyze this makes no sense because when someone goes to choose a house or a place to live, you would think it would deal with the house, if the neighbors are nice, and whatever else they prefer. All people do this of course but in different ways. It seems the people in my area find it more important to be around more of "their own" than actually live where they may actually want to live. Why is this? Can anyone really pinpoint why this is?

Its pretty simple. Race. Are you surprised? Does this surprise you? Is putting the race card in this wrong? gtfoh. Yea I abbreviated that. Race is the reason why I am looked down upon before I even talk. Race is the reason why I walk in a store and I am automatically pinpointed as a suspect to steal. Race is a reason why people choose not to date outside of their race whether they want to or not. throughout my life. Race is a reason why people give me the confused looked when I tell them I am an engineering major. I have experienced things other people would never experience simply because of the color of my skin. And people have the nerve to ask me about why I am the way I am. I am the way I am because of my environment. I am from the White Side. What does that mean do you ask?

As I said before, I grew up in an area that is culturally split because of the color of one's skin. I live on the side of the street that is not the color of my own. I am from the White Side. On this side, I learned that racism is a real thing by the age of 7 years old by my next door neighbor. By the age of 13, I realized race affects who you can even choose to like because if I was to date a white girl I would be seen as a sellout. At the age of 15, I began noticing the change in the color of people in my high school classes going from a mixture of all races to simply white. At this same age, I was introduced to the word "Oreo" and how I am one because I look black but I act white... What the hell does that even mean? I hope you sense my anger and annoyance from that one single word. By the age of 16 years old, the only way I kept up in the black population was from being on the football team. At this very age, I began being called a sellout by my own race because I wanted to do something the average black male in this society doesn't do, and that is become an engineer. Do you know what it feels like to not have a "side?" Seriously, stop thinking about yourself for once and have an out of body experience. Picture yourself as a 6 foot 2 inch, 225 pound black male that is handsome, big, dark skinned, decently muscular, little body fat, smart educated 23 year old. Walk down a predominantly white neighborhood in your head where they probably have never seen a black person in flesh before and tell me what you think will happen. Do you think they wont give a damn? Do you think they will call the cops? Do you think they will come outside to take a picture since they never seen one before? Do you think they will assume every stereotype of you and not even think to get to know how you really are? If you answered all those questions in your head with the demeanor of what would actually happen, I congratulate you. If you seriously had to sit there and nitpick how every which one of those situations COULD go with every scenario with simply saying in your head the first thing that came to your mind, you are clearly trying to find an answer that is not logical.

I do not have a side. I grew up without having a side. I don't know what it is like to be fully engulfed in any community of a single race because I never experienced that. I don't know what it feels like to feel warmth from your own kind on a large scale. All I know is, in whatever group of people I choose to be apart of, I will always be from the White Side.

Moral: Try to look deeper than skin. All skin does is cover what is inside trying to get out and show their self, not the other way around.