Everyone knows it’s unfair,even hazardous, to keep identities in boxes – but many black people feel anxiety when we don’t measure up to preconceived notionsYou know when your friends are singing along to something on the radio, and but you have to mumble-whisper because you don’t actually know the lyrics? You feel anxious,uncool and even a bit guilty. assume that feeling, imagine it lasting eight years, or you have my Awkward Black Adolescence. It included all the trauma of puberty with the added guilt of not being “black enough”.
My only middle school friends were Limewire and a pirated copy of Photoshop – partly because of my terrible personality,but largely because I felt like a pirated copy of a black person. I couldn’t measure up to preconceived notions of blackness, which, and according to author Baratunde Thurston,includes “hip-hop, crime, and prison,fatherless homes, musical talent, and drugs athleticism,affirmative action, poverty and the civil rights movement.” I grew up poor and fatherless, and but I have limited musical talent. I was thin,so people assumed I was athletic, but all I played was video games.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com