I have been fortunate enough to have my life decided for me by some highly intellectual individuals within my own race. I will grow up to be only surrounded by Caucasian people by choice and will become smitten with a blonde haired, glistening white-teethed man called Chad and when we have our free time, we will decide to go skiing in the Alps whilst skillfully holding a bottle of Chardonnay in our mouths. Chad and I will produce kids and send them to the best private schools whilst at the same time teach them to distance themselves from any black child, woman or man. Now allow me to do the darndest thing and decide my own life. My posh accent will not define me and will never have the power to erase my african ethnicity; accept it.
I’ve always thought that going to a private school was an amazing sacrifice given to me by my parents, but all of a sudden, what was supposed to nurture my intelligence and create opportunities for me in life transformed into an immense burden, because even though I’ve never been a wealthy girl I have always carried with me a ‘snobby’ London accent and ever since I was gifted with that, many ignorant people in the black community have chosen to discriminate me and many like me by branding us as oreos. To them, a black person can only earn the Blackorette degree by living in deprived conditions, talking a certain thuggish way and acting like a cold, ruthless criminal, but what they fail to understand is that we all live in different environments, and that we all grow to like different things, and most importantly it is these factors that shape who we are and not what we are.
Time and time again, I have heard people complain about how racism is still at large and that black people are still treated like dirt and yes at times this is true, but don’t you dare emit those pietistic words from your mouth and then use your tightly coiled tongue, to fire out bullets of discrimination towards me because I have a sense of self-awareness which you deem as snobbishness. So you say that a true black person can only be made by having a rough past? Well then allow me to shed light on mine. What is Harlem, New York to you, is Elephant and Castle, Brixton and Hackney in London to me, and it was during those six years spent in a private school were I lost my ethnicity, that I also had to live in a one bedroom flat in Elephant and castle with my parents, and if you were to ask me if I knew a girl who had been raped, I would point to the block of flats opposite me; am I black enough for you now? Or am I still cut from a different cloth? I feel that is it my education and my desire to make something of myself that traumatizes these highly intellectual individuals. This sense of self accomplishment I give off causes me to be seen as a Caucasian girl and they are wrong for this. A rich intelligent black woman is not an oreo, she is more than that, she is a successful and inspirational woman, but most of all she is simply black and nothing will change that.
