Making My Blackness a “Normality”
Until I reached middle school, growing up, an Oreo was simply a delicious chocolate cookie with white cream in the center. I didn’t know it was a derogatory term until it was spat at me in the eighth grade lunch period by a fellow young black girl.
“What did you say?” was my genuine reaction in response to a term that was so foreign to me it could’ve been in a different language. “I said you’re such an Oreo.” The look of confusion on my face must’ve been enough of a signal to encourage her to explain the ignorant statement even further. “It means you’re white on the inside, but black on the outside.” Rather than taking offense, being the inquisitive tween I was I asked, “Why do you think that?” She stared and then threw out an ever so intelligent “I don’t know you just are.” Not being able to help myself I pushed inquiring, “Is it because I’m smart?” I honestly don’t know where this question came from, but I would like to say that it derived from the fact that we had just completed a test and I was the only one in the class to receive an A. As a result, no one could get their test grade curved and I was the new target of the day. She tilted her head into the air, shoved another piece of chicken sandwich in her mouth, and what she said will stick with me forever. “I guess so.” In that moment I no longer felt attacked, but sorry. I felt sorry that another black girl like me thought that being smart equated to being white.
I never understood why being black in America had to be something so foreign. I was taught growing up that I was black and that was amazing, but I was more than just my race. I loved to read books of fantasy and played with my imaginary Power Ranger friends. I loved watching Arthur in my pink flower pajamas and dancing around with my Walkman on my hip to lil Bow Wow and *Nsync. I knew what race I was, I was happy with myself, and thought nothing of it. I was a normal black girl. I could watch a children’s show and see people with my skin complexion all over the screen. As I grew older and my taste in shows began to mature past Disney Channel and Nickelodeon though, I began to witness a gap. Where was I on the television screen. There would be so many shows of teen girls struggling through high school, entering college for the first time, and dealing with just teen problems. Even though I could relate to some of the issues, where was the teen girl that looked like me. My feelings of normalcy began to fade into inadequacy.
“At 16, I just remember looking at Love & Basketball wide-eyed, wanting to watch it again immediately afterward and feeling like, ‘Okay, I could do this,’ because it was in my neighborhood and it was just super black but not about being black, which I love — it was just regular.” This statement by Issa Rae, writer and star of the web series “Awkward Black Girl, on her teen experience relates to mine at the age of ten. I wasn’t particularly allowed to watch all of Love & Basketball until I was older of course, but the movie’s way of portraying blackness in such a “normal” matter is what made it so relatable and positive. It’s really just a simple romantic love story with the typical struggles most couples have as they grow older together through high school, college, and after. There were no race issues or hurdles because of their culture that the main characters had to overcome. Just basic life obstacles that anyone of any race could encounter. Rae is attempting to once again have a representation of “regular” black experiences on television with her new show, Insecure, on HBO.
In an article for The Cut Magazine, she discusses how she feels like a “normal/regular” black woman even while being the first to have her own show on HBO. She relays her childhood experiences as being “rich of exposure to different kinds of people that helped develop her worldview.” Reading Rae’s words I finally felt as though someone got the point. She observes something as lacking from television and decides to fix it rather than just complain about it’s absence. In the article, she acknowledges other predominantly black shows on television that are depicting black people in “normal” situations such as Black-ish, Empire, Atlanta, and Power and expresses her appreciation for their emergence. Rae’s show will be another staple in making black experiences on television “regular” again.
Thinking back now to my fellow black classmate who called me an Oreo, I now understand her. As a young black girl she didn’t feel normal in society. She had no examples of intelligent black women or black women working “regular” jobs such as a reporter, lawyer, or doctor. She had no comparison so all she could say was that I was “white” on the inside. With so many representations of “normal” black woman on television shows such as Being Mary Jane, Scandal, and Grey’s Anatomy. Even in horror fiction as a heroine in the Walking Dead, the badass known as Michonne. Hopefully another young black girl won’t be called an Oreo because she is smart, but instead perhaps she’ll be compared to one of the main black female characters on a “regular” television show.
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