Both my parents are African-American and proud of their heritage. However, their blackness comes from different places. My mom grew up in Bayview Hunters Point where she had the only house in a group of almost all-black friends who lived in the projects. Athletics were extremely important to her and she attended undergrad with a full scholarship for basketball at a D1 school. You could say my dad was the opposite. He grew up in Palo Alto in a neighborhood filled with houses. Most of his friends were white and always had the mindset of going to college as if it were part of the trajectory in life. He was never teased for getting good grades, but people always expected less of him. When he got into Stanford, he often felt inadequate in comparison to classmates.
Though I feel more attached to my dad’s experience as I too grew up in Palo Alto with only one friend who is African-American, I often don’t identify with either side My parents put me in situations where I could meet black people but I seldom made friends. I thought couldn't relate to the extroverted, loud kids who made beats on the desk and rarely listened to teachers. Even still, I couldn’t relate to the kids who almost reject their heritage, identify more with being white than otherwise and looked in disgust towards the aforementioned. I was stuck somewhere in the middle and didn’t see anyone else who was like me.
This past summer I went to a teen conference for Jack and Jill, a national black organization I have been a part of since the age of 2. I was not excited. Meeting with multiple different chapters from those in SoCal to those in Alaska, seemed extremely daunting to me. I wasn’t prepared to see an even bigger extent of the two extremes I thought I knew. What I experienced changed my perspective. On the second night, three people shared spoken words surrounding the theme,”The Theft of Our Identity”. Three completely different speakers spoke on their experience with cultural appropriation. During the presentations, there were those who yelled their “mhms” their “preach!” and there were those who simply nodded along, waiting until the end to applaud. When each speaker finished, I saw people who had skin darker than mine and those who were white-passing erupt into the loudest applause I ever heard. This night allowed me to see that I could be uniquely myself and still, whenever I choose to share the community will stand and applaud for the simple fact that I showed courage in telling my perspective.
Just like the blue table I come to at lunch, my black community will always be a place I can come to whether I am sad, joyful or frustrated. Some will have a similar sentiment to me, and others will not. Some will look like me and others will not, but there will never again be the questions of whether or not I belong. I know that I do.
