Aug 13 2008
It’s who I am, not what I look like
Out of my circle of friends, the majority of them are white. My mother hates this fact. She does not understand how my best friend can be white and how I can hang out with her and her family without issue. No matter how often I’ve tried to explain that I do not feel any different with her because our skin colors don’t match, she does not get it. And yet knowing this, it still manages to annoy me when she makes her comments about it.
I’m not close to a lot of people. I’ve got one of those personalities that you either love or you hate and not many people love it. I’ve had this knowledge since I was in junior high, so I’m okay with it. But around the same time I figured if I sat around waiting for only the Black kids to fall in love with my personality I would probably die lonely. Besides it’s the differences that make us interesting right?
The friends I spoke of earlier, we’ve known each other close to 13 years now. They know that I don’t eat things with cute faces (bunnies, deer) but will kill a cow in a minute. If I had millions, they’re the people I’d split my money with, not because they’d ask for the handout, but because it’s always been what’s yours is mine and what’s mine is ours with us. I ask myself over and over again why she doesn’t understand that the only person I’m ‘Black Tiffany’ to is her.
Now sure, there are some family members that act less than acceptable (in my opinion) when around me. But you know what, that’s they’re loss! If they think just because I’m Black I’m not worth getting to know then they’re missing out on me and what I can bring into their life. I try not to take the rejection personally, and honestly I sometimes fail miserably. Yet at the end of the day, I dust their rejection and the situation off as a life lesson and move on.
It continues to frustrate me that she can’t do the same. Hours have been devouted to fuming at her backhanded comments and her ways, but in the end it always dawns on me: She’s the person missing out.
That’s when the anger turns to pity.
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I guess my question in this situation would be, how oftern do your white friends come around to hang out with you and your family? If the answer is not as equally as you hang out with theirs, then your mother may have a reason to feel the way she does . . . .