Adja Toure
Annandale, VA

Not a day goes by without at least one schoolmate telling me I’m white. But only on half of these occasions do I defend myself. My parents are not American, so my upbringing is quite different than that of other black students I am acquainted with. As an advanced student, I have been in classes where I am the minority. My education and my race shouldn’t be intertwined, yet people seem so surprised when I act myself, which isn’t like a stereotypical African American teenage girl. My friends are mostly white, and seem to think that I am too, despite the physical contradiction that is my skin. I find their mindset unfair; basically they’re saying that in order to be smart, I must be white. On the flipside, my colored friends – not just black- think I am “whitewashed” as well. All of it is difficult to handle sometimes because I’m not always taken seriously, or people call me offensive names. But it’s not just me who is getting hurt; the minorities who associate me with white people are degrading themselves by unknowingly claiming to be inferior. I try to explain that my intelligence has nothing to do with how I look on the inside, but in the end, I continually laugh it off and proceed to be the “whitest black person” in my grade.