American + International, Oreo, best of both
Joanna Hubner,
Fort Worth, TX
My name is Joanna Hubner, I am a teenager raised in Fort Worth Texas, and I am mixed. My dad is white and my mom is from the independent island of Grenada in Caribbean Sea.
He’s my dad, not the gardener.
Kelly Stuart,
Brooklyn, NY.
I was five when my mother married my stepfather, Alfred Brown, Jr. in 1980. My stepfather, or, as I think of him, my father, was 21 years older than my mom and had already raised a daughter by the time he met me, but that didn’t stop him from getting a second job at the Ford plant in Mahwah, New Jersey so he could give me what I’d asked him for when he married my mom: my own room, and a back yard with a swing. He got me the room and the backyard and the swing, but what came with moving from the city where we were to a small rural town where a different set of understandings, like when I went from a place where I knew other mixed-race families to a place where kids used to throw Oreos at me on the bus to school to symbolize my black-and-white family. Even after the Oreos stopped flying in middle school, I dealt with people’s fear of and prejudice against my father every day.
Now that I am grown and my father has passed away, and people see the blonde, blue-eyed, upper-middle-class, NPR-listening, Brooks Brothers-employed me, people think they know who I am and who I must have come from. This was brought home to me recently when someone looking over my shoulder as I tried to find a picture on my computer pointed at my computer and asked me whose house was in the picture that was currently on my screen. I said that it was a picture of the house in which I grew up. My dad was also in the picture, pulling weeds, and the person looking over my shoulder said, “And was that your gardener?” I said no, that he was my father, and in that moment, I was so angry at the implication of the assumption, and yet, I was so, so very grateful that I got to claim him again, publicly, as the man who made me who I am.
*PHOTO CREDIT National Geographic
No, I am not an oreo.
Sarah Staples,
Nashville, TN.
I grew up in a predominantly white community in a city that was predominantly black and hispanic or latino. My best friends were always white, my parents made me study classical piano for 12 years, I played soccer, I read Shakespeare and Jane Austen, and I went to boarding school. No, I am not an “Oreo” (black on the outside, white on the inside). I’m black, specifically Caribbean American, and calling me “white on the inside” is actually saying that a person can’t be wholly black and enjoy things outside of the stereotypical “black culture.” You don’t need to explain my personality or interests by ascribing a race to it. Don’t cast me into whatever mold your debilitated mind compels you to put me into. I’m not an oreo. I’m a person. My name is Sarah. You may refer to me as such.
I myself, am not an oreo
Natalie Ngong,
Louisville, KY.
Sometimes in this world not having the voice that is expected of you as the race you are, creates a need for insults. In some people’s minds you are not truly the race you appear to be you act like another race simply due to the way you converse. This should not be an issue in a society that has many dialects and cultures and in a world that is a tossed salad of people.
Being Black and southern, educated engineer
Kristen Ellerbe,
Richmond, VA.
Calling me an Oreo or not really black, or basically a white girl means that you define some part of my personality, attitude, preferences, or demeanor as being owned and attributed solely to white people. Is it my intelligence, my sense of style, or how I speak? Is it because I’m well read, interested in politics, or surround myself with more than just other black people. If you know or not, my choice to laugh, ignore it, or otherwise not act is to not embarrass you because I love you. Even in your ignorance. I am BLACK. Yes, I am also Filipino. Just like I’m also a woman and an American. Do not belittle my blackness because I don’t come from an urban culture. That is aimed at all people. What you call white, I just see as part of the culture I was raised in: middle class, educated Southern culture. I was raised deeply imbued with that STEM fields give us freedom. My father raised me and I knew I would be an engineer. So now I am an adult engineer, in traditional social sorority, and graduated from an Ag-Tech public university. Yes, I listen to country music. Yes, I am well-spoken. Yes, I am 25 and own my own home. No, I don’t consider myself white. Yes, I am marrying a black man. Yes, he is an engineer. Yes, I read the newspaper and drink pumpkin lattes. I wear Lilly Pulitzer and bows in my hair. I wear my hair natural and it is not an afro. But these are things that do not define my race. They define my culture and it is not a white culture. It is my culture which inherently makes is black.
So just stop. #endrant
When did “enunciating” mean “sounding white?”
Skye Carr,
Virginia Beach, VA.
Throughout middle school and high school, people used to always call me an “Oreo” because I was one of the few black students in my class that spoke properly and enunciated my words. I’m curious when enunciating became something that only white people did.
Why do you always act white?
Anika Moore
Gulfport, MS
You can not act a color. You can not be a color. Just because I speak as though I have read a book once in my life does not make me instantly “an Oreo”. Please stop.
Oreo: Black outside, white inside
Lauren,
Silver Spring, MD.
This was a term that was often used to describe me during my middle school days, it always hurtful to hear that people thought that because I was smart and took pride in my education it made me somehow less black.
I feel othered for being lightskinned.
Lexie Nobrega,
Norfolk, VA.
I was never “black enough” to fit in with the black kids, but I am not white either so I obviously did not fit with those kids either. I was called an “oreo” often-black on the outside but my personality was equated to that of stereotypical whiteness. I always embraced being of mixed-race, and fight against this idea that I have to fit myself into a stereotype in order to feel a sense of belonging. I embrace who I am and encourage others to do the same.
Coding as white isn’t the same.
Kristina Ogilvie,
Arlington, VA.
It just struck me, I guess: on paper (i.e. a resume) I am for all intents and purposes a white girl. My name couldn’t be less ethnic, and I’ve had the privilege of getting an amazing education and having experiences that my father (Afro-Panamanian) could only have dreamed of. But I could never pass for white, physically. And for all the different ethnicities and nationalities that I’ve tried to fit in with, I’ve never identified as white. I’ve been accused of being an Oreo, trying to be white, but actually thinking of myself as such never really occurred to me. I don’t know if that had to do with growing up in the military, where race takes a backseat to other social hierarchies, or growing up overseas, where I was American first, and x second, but as much as I benefit from certain privileges the same as white folks, I never wanted to be white, and it never occurred to me to really try.
I don’t see you as Black
Adrienne Crew
Los Angeles, CA
I’m always troubled about the concept of being an “Oreo” and not really projecting an “African American” identity but rather always being the upper middle class nerd that I was born and refusing to “code switch.” What is “Black” anyways? I get this comment both from whites and non-whites.
My kids’ RACE is not OREO
Ashli Dean,
Overland Park, KS.
Selected from anonomous entries in Professor Seiler’s Social Problems Class Johnson County Community College -extra credit
Not an Oreo cookie; an American.
Conrad Folkes,
Royersford, PA.
I’m a first-generation American of Jamaican descent. I was born in Brooklyn, NY and moved to a suburb of Pittsburgh, PA when I was seven years old. I’ve always been an outgoing person. I make friends easily.
I’m black, but I don’t fit into black American culture all that nicely. I don’t speak like the majority of black Americans. I grew up as a racial minority in my town, but I didn’t act like it. I got involved in sports, high school musicals, I was an exchange student during my junior year of high school. I was even voted prom king after returning.
I’m black, and I don’t fit into white American culture all that nicely either. I dealt with racism in that small town as a child. There were countless arguments between my parents and those of my downstairs neighbor, Chris. They were always racially charged, but we just wanted to play and have sleepovers. I was called a “n*****,” by another child in elementary school while we were all playing on the playground.
I’m black, but most of my friends are white. We have more experiences in common, I find. My wife is white (from Portugal). My children are mixed (we say “Jameriguese”), and I’m black. I’m not an Oreo though; I’m not black, but white on the inside. I’m a black American of Jamaican descent and I try to love others as much as I love me and mine.
Most others love me back. I guess they can’t help it!
Which of your parents is white?
Crystal White
Detroit, MI
Growing up with a fair complexion in a place like Michigan is harder than most would think. With Detroit being pretty much the only city inhabited by African Americans until recent years, living in the suburbs was a difficult life. From being called the n-word in elementary school where I was the only African American girl in my class, to getting to high school and my curly hair often prompting the questions, “What are you mixed with?” or “Which one of your parents is white?”, I had experienced an often ignored kind of discrimination. No, I wasn’t directly being called an Oreo or half-breed, but the sheer implication that I was a mutt, hurt just the same. My reply to the questions was always, “I’m mixed with my mother and my father.” Beige is Beautiful!
Teased as “Oreo” — our friendship abandoned.
Kay Wilkie
Albany, NY
I lost my closest friend following intensifying racial tension in Albany city schools during the early 1970s. It was just too difficult for her to be seen with me, her white friend, esp. since she was also ostracized for being in the “academically talented” program. Hard for me, daughter of civil rights and anti-war liberal family.
Oreos. Shouldn’t they be America’s favorite?
Ashley Pettiford,
Cincinnati, OH.
I am black white, and Hispanic. I’ve had some mishaps from being what I am and it’s kind of ridiculous. People need to stop worrying about me being three different races and instead putting more energy into something that could be more beneficial! Boom Suckka!
