Black, but not black enough
Just because you are black doesn't mean everyone thinks you are black enough. At 25 years old, I can recount incidents in my life where people have questioned my blackness and my identity as a black person. When I was 16 years old, a girl at my summer camp was bold enough to tell me what she thought of me compared to the other black people she saw on her television screen. She was surprised that I did not act like the black girls she saw on Maury Povich. I was not aggressive, I did not have kids or make a scene everywhere I went. She was from a small rural town in Canada and has never befriended a black girl until she met me at camp. I wished my incidents ended there, but I am constantly told by blacks and non-blacks that I am not black enough because I do not “act” like a stereotypical black person. I realized overtime that there will always be someone who will question and be vocal about my black identity; but I learned that the most important opinion of how I identify as black comes from me.
Brianna
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