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You Sound White!
"It bothered me to no end that I had to speak a certain way to be 'black'"
By Nia Williams
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to this Commentary!
Nia Williams challenges the popular image of what it means to be black.
What color is my skin? Is it black or is it white? Can you tell just by listening to my voice? One day I called my friend and she didn’t know who I was. When I said “It’s me, Nia” she told me that I sounded like a white person and that’s why she didn’t know who I was. I was shocked. It bothered me to no end that I had to speak a certain way to be “black”. I always thought that black was a race and not a lifestyle. The music I listen to, the way I talk, and the school I go to provoke people to call me an “oreo”. Black on the outside, white on the inside. The hip hop industry has marketed a stereotype about who a black person should be.
According to that stereotype I have to talk like I don’t have an education, I have to be loose with men, and I have to refer to my own people in negative terms. For a while after my friend told me that I sounded white on the phone, I tried to mimic the way I heard the rappers talk on TV so that I could talk “talk black”, but I realized that it wasn’t me. I should not have to hide who I truly am just so people won’t think I’m an oreo. I realized to be black was not to be something negative. Just because people like Snoop Dog celebrate things like gang activity and drugs does not mean that its black people are supposed to act. In my opinion if you are born black then you are black and you don’t have to act a certain way to prove it.
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