When you're in middle school, fitting in is the name of the game. You're going to dress like the people you hang out with, you're going to listen to the same music that your friends are bumping and you're going to talk just like everybody around you does. No one's aspiring to be the geeky theater kid at 12 years old. Unless, of course, everybody else is aspiring to be the geeky theater kid.
I was no different. Growing up in Boston, but going to school in a nearby suburb, I was fucking with the same shit my friends were. Meaning, I was rocking an embarrassing amount of Quiksilver. I owned an extensive Sex Pistols vinyl collection and even some crazy expensive rarities that you can't find in 2014. I also said "dude" a lot and rarely used the n-word. Basically, I hung out with a ton of white boys.
When you're twelve, you don't consider socioeconomic status or race when picking your friends. I did notice that when I slept at their houses the "fireworks" never popped off, but I thought it was because I wasn't in the city. I never considered that "fireworks" were gunshots, and that the suburbs just didn't have those unless we were playing Grand Theft Auto with the state of the art surround sound. As long as all my friends liked video games, punk rock and the same sports teams, I didn't see an issue. Some of the black dudes in my neighborhood fucked with me because I showed them Bad Brains and I loved the Celtics. Friendship was about your interests. Skin color was never taken into consideration. Who the fuck cares, right?
I didn't think that having white friends would ever become a problem in my life, and in reality it shouldn't have. My generation was fortunate enough to witness television programs like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Family Matters that broke down racial boundaries. I'm not saying racial tensions were nonexistent—we also witnessed O.J. and Rodney King—but for the most part I thought we had somewhat of a cultural understanding of each other, blacks and whites. My friends certainly weren't compartmentalizing our relationship like I was the one black friend they could have or some shit. It wasn't until I started to hear this word "oreo" being tossed around on a daily basis that I realized my affinity for Quiksilver and punk rock may have some serious racial connotations.
An "oreo" is a fucked up term bigots use to describe black people who supposedly act white: black on the outside, white on the inside. It's a very clever insult—bigots are always the brightest of the bunch. Clearly, it's moronic to think that anyone can act a certain race, but people are fucking stupid, so here I am writing about being called an "oreo." It wasn't like the name-calling sent me home balling everyday and I didn't quite understand the implications of other students referring to me as such right away. Eventually, that shit got to me though. It felt like people had replaced Brian with "oreo" seemingly overnight.
No black person wants to act 'white.' LOL white people are the worst!
Soon enough, every time I did anything that wasn't considered black, I was met with ridicule from other students. When people found out I played lacrosse it was, "Of course Brian plays lacrosse." When I wore a studded belt they threw shots because "that's some serious white boy shit." When I started dating a white girl they said, "He would never date a black girl." Dog, I'm 13 years old, I just asked out the first girl who showed any interest in kissing me with tongue. If she was green and was trying to let me touch her boob no doubt I would have asked her out regardless. I remember dating a black girl in a neighboring school soon afterwards and people legitimately not believing me, like the idea was so ludicrous I had to be making it up.
As much as I hate to say it, that shit really got to me. No black person wants to act "white." LOL white people are the worst! I tried everything. I studied up on my African American heritage. I read Malcolm X. I watched all of Eyes on the Prize just to make sure I knew absolutely everything I could. I didn't want to be out-blacked by anybody! Here I am trying to do all of this shit that's going to make me down, meanwhile, nowhere in any of this literature I'm reading does anybody say shit about lacrosse or The Sex Pistols.
I thought my fellow brothers would be very impressed with my new knowledge. You know, we could vibe over Malcolm X's hatred for the white devil or whatever. I remember going up to a dude on my basketball team who I thought was really black. Everybody liked him and no one ever called him an "oreo"—this is the one dude I've got to impress. So, I went up to him after practice and said, "Yo, I just watched the Malcolm X movie with Denzel. That shit makes it so hard to go to school with all of these people, huh?" He stared at me for a minute, then said, "Why are you always talking some stupid white boy shit?" Homeboy must not have been familiar.
I'm lucky that I was able to react to the name calling with positivity rather than ignorance. I owe a lot of that to dope, educated parents who have always made it a priority for me to have an acute sense of self, even at an early age. I've seen plenty of kids who have been called an "oreo" respond just by hating all black people. That self-hatred isn't healthy and can lead to some serious problems in adulthood (see: Don Lemon). All the shade early on actually gave me the chance to learn about my African American history and I'm better off because of it.
Some people still probably call me an "oreo," or say something offensive to that same effect. It's whatever. I'm a 25-year-old black dude who still likes the Sex Pistols, but, thankfully, doesn't own any Quiksilver. If you think I act white, you have some serious growing up to do, bruh, not me.
Brian Padilla is a writer living in Brooklyn. You can follow him on Twitter here.
