I Am Me

All my life people have thought that I was Mexican due to the color of my skin; I am half-white and half-black. Due to that, as I got older people would say that I am not black which makes me angry because I am black. It does not matter if I am half, one fourth, or one-sixteenth black. If people can say that they are one thirty seconded Cherokee Indian and not have anyone say that they are not an Indian, then how can they say I am not Black.

I would want to go back and live in the 1960s not to prove anything to anyone; but to be a part of the movement that let my parents get married, lets me sit on the same seat on a bus as a white man or woman; but, most of all to learn something about how tough my Black father had it growing up in racist 1960s Georgia. I live in the twenty first century, and I can honestly say that I have only been called a NIGGER once in my life and I will always remember that day. I was in the seventh grade and I was at school early like I always was and was walking around the school with my friend like normal; we walked by the PE locker room and some girl just said “ go back to where you came from NIGGER” and laughed. I know she meant go back to Africa, but, if she really wanted me to go back to where I came from than it would an hour and a half drive to Copperas Cove, TX. I thought to myself “didn’t the civil rights movement get rid of that? Isn’t that what MLK, Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks work for? Did MLK and Malcolm X die for the civil rights movement just for people to still call me a nigger when they do not even know me? NO it can’t be, can it?”

I want to go back to the 1960s and see MLK give his famous “I Have A DREAM” speech, march on Washington, boycott buses with Rosa Parks or even just to say that I was alive when the civil rights movement was going on like my dad can say. In school, I never really learned about