A Story About Being Mislabeled
What does it mean, to feel like your skin is never really the right color?
The other day in a grocery store in West Oakland, a man slightly darker in color than my dad told me I had beautiful skin. I had spent a few days in New Orleans, baking without sunscreen in an attempt to make myself browner, more obviously colored. He asked me what I was, and I told him I was mixed, somewhat simply, with black and white. He went to give me that handshake that white people don’t know how to do, and I was terrified of doing it wrong, of betraying myself as not enough of what I had told him I was.
He wanted me to get involved in some sort of training to become some sort of financial something, a way, he communicated, for me to make upwards of $10K a month. I had stumbled through describing what I do for a living, the way that I find myself doing often to strangers lately. He wanted me to jump on a conference call with some woman whose name I forget, and after taking his number, I texted him my name for some reason, intrigued about making that much money in a month, but afraid of him a little, for the way he insisted without listening that he knew what was best for me, and was only here to help. I was afraid to say yes to him, and to say no to him, the same way I am afraid of my dad.
