Evolution is the concept in which a being, large or small, adapts in order to survive a new or changing environment. A black bird in Antartica will do its best to survive, but at some point the harsh conditions will break it. A black bird is not meant to survive in a frozen wasteland and has no hope of survival, even after four hundred years. Its experiences of Antartica will be different than that of a penguin, a being that has had hundreds of thousands of years to adapt. Now what if the penguins had created Antartica and then blamed the black birds for not being able to adapt?
I know I don't look, or talk, or act "Black", or so I have been told by the White people around me. I live in the Twin Cities, but was raised in a rural area. I was one of three Black students in my graduating class. I was in the top eight of my graduating class. I don't know where they ranked.
In college, I was friends with the other two half race girls at my university. We lived together at the "mixed girl house." My senior year, I took a DNA test and found out that I'm only a quarter Black. I haven't spoken to them lately.
As a teacher, I thought being Black would be an asset.
I was told not to see color, because I could pray by dark skin away. I was told I was racist against White people, because I wasn't allowed to teach To Kill A Mockingbird. I was told that it's ok for students to use racially charged language, because they have a disability. This sounds crazy. I must be lying.
There are two Americas, one a subversive doppelgänger, with her picket fences and independence; the other a broken trueself, brutalized, rejected, and set ablaze. I know they are both there. I live in the plane of America II as a second class citizen and I have been able to see into America I my whole life. I see it in my White sister, my mother, my stepfather. They see glimpses of me, a shadow in a mirror, a reflection in a puddle.
And they ask me why I want to leave.
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