“What you is?”

“I’m Black.”

“You mixed?”

“No.”

“Your mama White?”

“No.”

“Your daddy White?”

“Well, what you is?”

This call-and-response was routine for me growing up as a light-skinned, “high yellow”, hazel-eyed boy in Macon, Georgia. In this town in the Deep South, the color lines of the Jim Crow era were still perceptible. White kids would typically hang out at the movies on Fridays, while Black kids would go on Saturdays. Some rural schools even still had segregated high school proms. My upbringing occurred in both Black and White spaces, and for some of these experiences, I still bear scars.

Growing up, the kids in our majority-Black public schools would regularly approach me or my brother with that question of “What you is?”. Of course, I knew I was Black because that’s who I grew up around. That’s who my family is, and that’s who my people are. Because I knew who I was, I never suffered from an identity crisis of being “too White for the Black kids, too Black for the White kids”. My experiences were simply a matter of others filtering my phenotype through their concept of race. 

Many of the resulting projections were benign. I had heard all the jokes from other Black kids, and knew what to expect in a roast session (light-bright, French vanilla, the list goes on). The projections from White folks, however, were the ones that were deeply poisonous.

I remember that my first experiences of going out into the world to school or daycare were among my first memories of interacting with White people. Not that there was animosity there, my early Montessori education wouldn’t allow for that. However, growing up in the Deep South means that color lines are clearly understood, even if not explicitly explained.

I sat in daycare after school one day at the Reading and Learning Center. The name was quite ironic because we would get in trouble for picking up a book without permission. Instead we were sent out to the playground where we played like animals and brought dusty and dirty school clothes back home to mama. 

That particular day I had a ruler in hand which listed all the US presidents, 43 of them at the time. After each of their names and years of presidency, was the letter R or D to denote their political party, Republican or Democrat. A White boy whose name I recall as Lucas said to me, “The Democrats are evil.”

My impressionable six year old mind questioned it to the degree a six year old mind can. I now understand Lucas’ statement to be a clear indication of what he was taught at home, that progressive ideas are evil. Accompanying that conservative outlook in the Deep South is the false assumption of racial superiority of Whites over Blacks. 

Second grade came around, and I was the ripe old age of eight . Ms. Scott, our teacher, began to articulate the dynamics of race. “What if some people came in here and snatched away all of the Black students in our class?” The students reacted to the provocative comment. I said, “I would try to pass for White so they wouldn’t get me.” 

It appears that the notion of colorism was understood in my young mind. At the moment, the comment was made in jest, but I reflect on the poison embedded there. Indeed, some Black folks in this country have used their fair complexion to pass into Whiteness, hide their identity, and reap the benefits of White privilege. 

On to third grade; somebody farted in class, and let me tell you, it smelled bad. A White girl whispered to me, “It was one of the Brown people.” For me, the way she said this to me implicitly suggested I was not among the “Brown people”.

My teenage years found me in private school, and thus entering a predominantly White environment: I hated it. I didn’t want to be there. My Dad observed me coming home with bad grades and experimenting with the origami of gang signs and said, “To hell with that, you’re going to private school.” 

Though I was walking distance from my previous schools, this environment could not have been more different. While in majority-Black public schools that “What you is?” interrogation signaled a question of my race, in majority-White private schools, I was unquestionably Black. That much was made clear by the Air Forces on my feet, and Dickies pants with the hair brush in the back pocket. 

“Why do you brush your hair like that,” they asked. “It doesn’t do anything. I see no difference.” Clearly these kids had no conception of waves, cuz I had them 360 spinning. 

I knew that in this new environment, my Blackness would make me different. But what I was not prepared for was that my Blackness would make me a nigger.

The poison of the N-word was first lobbed against me in the locker room of gym class. A White boy said to his buddy “Stop acting like a nigger.” This boy was baiting me. I could have beat him up, maybe I should have, but I didn’t. The White boy would have been taken as the victim, and I did not want my parents to lose the money they had put forth to send me to school there. 

One day, driving home from school with my father, I attempted to explain to him how much I didn't like it at school. And then it came out.

“I’m tired of them calling me a nigger.”

 “What!?” he said while stomping on the brakes in shock. Nothing was spoken about this after, at least not in my presence. Sadly, the issue would rear its ugly head again in my tenth grade year. 

“You should stop hanging out with that nigger Alex Sands,” texted a White boy texted to a White girl with whom I was good friends. I guess he had a crush on her. Such was the reason White girls would not be seen to date a Black guy. They wouldn’t want to be seen as a “snicker licker”.

The news of the text message got around in the football locker room before practice. The score was settled on the field with my helmet on his chin. Later, through the proximity of sports and class, we would become friends to a degree, as with the boy who lobbed that poison to me previously. 

I would make it through high school with the social, academic, and athletic accolades of the “people’s champ”, but the separation was abundantly clear. I was not like these people, and our paths would soon diverge. I went off to Washington D.C. for my HBCU experience at Howard, leaving that world behind. I don’t often return. 

My ten year high school class reunion is coming up this year. Traveling to Macon for a high school reunion is not high on my priorities considering the global life I currently live. However, it feels important for me to return; to see faces which I have not seen in a decade or more. To see the faces of those who knowingly or unknowingly caused such harm. 

What will I say? The noble part of me wants to talk to those people and bring that up. “You remember that time you called me a nigger? I don’t hold it against you because we were young, dumb, and miseducated but that hurt me deeply.” Clearly enough that I bring it up years later.

It took time to reconcile that pain. Why did I allow those White boys to do that to me? I’ve since learned alot about the world, and the machinations of racism, capitalism, and all the other mischievous -isms. Somewhere along the way I’ve healed, but contrary to the popular saying, time does not heal all. Not even if they liked your BLM post in 2020. You must address the pain. 

I recognize how I’ve been racialized, as we all are, and I’ve become aware how that has hurt me. I laugh while thinking back on some of my experiences growing up, but for others, I recoil. I’m thankful my world has expanded beyond that cradle of the Deep South. Here I sit in Mexico City as I write this, well-adjusted and circumspect. Perhaps I won’t turn my nose up at this ten-year reunion, and instead take the opportunity to go home, reconcile, and move on.

#AMAKACohortFeb2024