Life Through the Lens of a Café Latte
My skin is a café latte, the result of a mixture of dark rich coffee and smooth white creamer. I am not white or black. I’m not biracial, tri-racial, or mixed, I am just a café latte in a family of café lattes. When we’re young, our parents teach us how we are supposed to act in a coffee shop versus how we should at home or at school. Each environment holds a separate set of rules and expectations that we must follow. Often these rules go unspoken but if we break one we are judged, picked on, or asked to leave. So we follow them, we become aware of the different norms of each room we walk into. We adjust our posture or we keep our hoods off to fit in with the majority. To not be singled out. We walk through our lives constantly changing the parts of ourselves we show and hide.
On a warm summer day, I sit outside with a group of my friends. Some slather on sunscreen and others lay bare trying to get the ideal tan. Their skin white like french vanilla ice cream. With them I am funny, I’m a leader and a good listener. I am not the smartest of them so I don’t often talk about grades. I sit up straight and I cross my legs. I feel a soothing feeling of calmness and discomfort. For them to accept and hang out with me I know, I must act like them. I need to be who they want me to be. So, I put on my most stylish clothes, paste a smile on my face, and mold myself into the person they want me to be, the person they need me to be. Don’t be fooled, I am happy and I am me, but deep in the pit of my stomach, hands work ferociously to hold down the other parts of myself that want to rise. If I let them sneak their way up, slip from between my teeth and coat my skin, the room goes silent. An unwanted spotlight reminds my friends, I am not white. I will never be the perfect girl from the magazines. Quickly, I force back down my blackness and it settles at the bottom of my stomach like a rock. I fear that if my friends see me for all that I am they will no longer love me. If they realize the deepness of my pain, they will no longer hold me. If they notice the complicated puzzles I struggle to piece together in my brain, they will shun me. So, while I lay outside with them, this is me, the whitest I can be.
At school, we gather in a classroom for lunch, immediately a weight is lifted. Music and energy bump through me as I eat. My black friends range from complexions light as a sweet milk chocolate bar to as dark as rich cocoa. With them, I no longer want to hide my hair or my skin, I want to show it off. My light skin is a privilege and a butt of all the jokes. I need to prove to them that I am truly black. My posture and voice change. When we laugh I tilt my face up towards the sky and slap my leg. I smile so wide I can feel it in my eyes. To them I am quiet, I am funny and I am sharp. I am confident yet shy. When someone says something I nod along. It’s so much easier to just agree than to shake my head from side to side in disbelief. Disagreeing is a risk to my blackness. My head overflows with confusing thoughts, ideas, and opinions but I must keep them to myself. I don’t wish to mislead you, I am happy and I am me, but a rope tightly restrains the ideas in my throat making sure I say the right things. The things that will not change how they see me. The rope is strong but frayed. It has many knots holding it together from times it has snapped and my deepest thoughts came tumbling out. In response, the room paused and heads slowly turned to face me. The mood is killed and a gloomy pall hangs over us. They all look at me, eyes wide to see if I understood what I was saying. I did, I always do but I pretend I don’t. The concerned and hurt eyes of my friends cause me to hurry and tie the rope back together, and once again restrain my ideas to save their views of me. When I am with them, this is me, the blackest I can be.
Many people don’t understand, I am the sun and the moon. Both complete opposites but reliant on each other and are often seen together. The moon can’t shine without the sun and even on some of the sunniest days, the moon still lingers in the sky. There are two complex parts of myself but they can not exist without each other. Yet, if I let too much of my whiteness or blackness slip out, I have betrayed my friendships. Our society is strictly black and white and I am stuck somewhere in the middle, mixed up in all the gray. Though I desperately try to fit in, the fact is I don’t and I never will. I am a café latte in a vat of vanilla ice cream or a pool of chocolate. Too white for my black friends and too black for my white ones. Sometimes the moon aligns with the sun in a certain way so that more light seeps around the moon than usual making it shine bright. My blackness always leaks into my white life because someone never hesitates to suggest a hair braiding train or points out their skin is darker than mine. My whiteness infiltrates my black life because I will never be “fully black,” I mean, I can’t even dance. Sometimes despite my never-stopping effort to strap down and hide parts of myself, they slip out. I can’t hide my hair or my skin, but I can pretend that people’s words and actions don’t matter. I can pretend that not fitting in doesn’t hurt. Sometimes the moon stays in the sky bold not leaving for the sun to shine alone. Parts of my identity slip out because they are impossible to hide. Often it feels like I am two separate people. Two different versions of myself with my black and white friends. I think it would be easier if that was the case, but it’s not. One part of myself is not more natural than the other. Both parts and everything in between are me. I am a commingling of all my many identities. I just shift how others see me. I change my voice, my clothes, and my hair so that they perceive my identity in a certain way. No matter how much I struggle to be who they want me to, I am not. I am not black or white. I am not biracial, tri-racial, or mixed.
I am just a café latte in a family of café lattes.
