Why am I the only one? Why haven't my white friends made other black friends? Or Asian friends? Or Hispanic friends? WTF. I grew up in a predominately black neighborhood and then moved to a predominately white neighborhood when I was a teenager. It was two vastly different worlds. My insides longed to be around black people again and not just on visits back to see my family. So I enrolled in an HBCU called Johnson C. Smith as an attempt to regain my blackness. It was an epic fail. I quickly learned that just because you go to a black school doesn't mean you'll be educated in "blackness". I rebelled and ended up transferring to a majority white school on Long Island called CW Post. While there I felt like I stood out and became acutely aware of my race. I found myself trying to find myself.
During my 20's I just wanted to be me. I wanted to be accepted for me and for people to appreciate all that I had to offer. It started happening and I honestly felt like I was coming in to my own. Then I realized a divide was also forming. I had one set of friends that didn't hang with the other. They were basically divided by race. The black friends were made up of co workers and family members and the white ones were co workers from a previous job. Rarely did anyone mix. The only thing the groups had in common was me...on the surface anyway. With my black friends we talked about race and how even when you were trying to do right, you were being oppressed. We talked about hip hop beefs, neighborhood beefs, goals, aspirations and why we couldn't get ahead. With my white friends we talked about music, finances, museums, parks and tv shows. I enjoyed both groups and got along well in both settings but when it came to my white friends, no matter what I always thought about the fact that I was the only black one there. Some of my white friends listened to black music, appropriated the hip hop culture but didn't have one single black friend other than me. Why me?
So today as I think about the events I've been to over the past few months and even years I still wonder. I think about the weddings I've gone to and how i'm the only black person there. Like WTF. I think about barbecues, birthday parties, bachelorette parties etc and wonder damn am I a token? Shit....am I a safe negro? Fuck! What are my white friends thinking? Do they care? Have they tried to make friends with people that don't look like them? Am I ignorant to how my friends really think and see me? What's a girl to do? Does anyone else reading this deal with this?