Advanced Essay #1 - Mold

Horace Ryans III

08/06/18

Earth

MOLD

I one day hope that in the future, when I reflect in my days in high school, I can say that these were the moments where I truly began to discover myself.

A million thoughts raced through my mind, colliding with each other, one overlapping another, screaming, “pick me, pick me!” a thousand times over. Most of them lost because I’m overwhelmed. Some of them cut in half exploding into white dust and abandoned letters in my head because I can’t grasp on to them quick enough. I miss those thoughts, my best work fragmented into little pieces and tucked away into my mind. And that’s when I first woke up. The only thought that stood out but seemed to be the question that I could focus on, “what am I wearing today?”

“Joggers and a tee shirt sounds about right. I can’t go wrong with that.” I said in my head as I considered and imagined all the correlating colors and outfits I could wear that day. I put on the pants that hugged my ankles so tight they’d leave marks and throw on a solid t-shirt that had been washed one-too many times so you could see the color fading. That’s what I thought was cool and enticing my freshmen year. I was more interested in anything about what people said about my clothes. I more interested in to what they said about the outfit I spent a half hour planning. If the people thought I looked good, then I looked good. I was okay with that. I even had a beanie that I would wear occasionally all to fit the image of who I wanted to be. I broke away from my regularly scheduled haircut on tuesdays because I wanted a part of it to hang out. All to become someone else.

The adoption of this new character was how I spent my freshmen year. High school was a way to remold “Whore-race” into “Horace”. That didn’t stick though, more on that later. It’s no surprise to me now. In elementary school I was surrounded by students that had the same skin color as me, this is how it was; or actually...that’s is how it felt. I gravitated towards the White kids. I don’t know why, but it  was easier for me to just talk with them. I would ease my way into their friend groups, everybody wanted a black friend. But, with that came its’ own consequences. To this day, I can still hear my classmates laughing at me, and me thinking they were all laughing with me. Their taunts went a little like, “Horace...haha Whore-race” “Horace you’re a horse” “Horace, you’re basically white.” They said that one so much, it was engraved into my conscious. I  believed it.

As a lighter skinned Black kid, I knew that if I said, “Oh, my great-grandfather was white.” They’d believe. They already thought it, so why not just tell them. But I didn’t.No matter how bad I wanted to feed into their assumptions about who I was, I never could build up the courage to lie about my family like that. Claiming to be someone I’m not. Instead I would say, “Yeah, I know.” And  I kept it moving no objections and no questions. Up to eighth grade I was the whitest-black guy I knew. I claimed that title with pride even. To me, it was so ridiculous that it was a joke. But that’s who I thought I was.

High School was a fresh start. I could be, whoever I wanted to be. I imagined a Horace who was confident, kind, thoughtful, opinionated, eager, attentive. And I got what I wanted. Except I did all those things, but surrounded by white people. I sat with them at lunch, I hung out with them after school. Anywhere my white friends went, I was there. I began to talk and behave like them. My skin color and my history as a Black slowly erased itself from my mind as I became one of them. Of course it never escaped me that I was Black, I just never cared, I was having fun being someone I wasn’t. I gravitated to them naturally. It was subconscious at that point. I didn't realize I was the only Black friend. I didn’t realize I was the token, the token black friend that is.

If you didn’t already know what that is...it’s when a group of white people have one black friend that is “white on the inside, and black on the outside.” That’s who I was and I was okay with that.  I really was. I started to realize though that that’s not who I wanted to be. After a year of listening and observing their conversation, one thing stood out to me: they will never understand what it means to be black. We talked about gentrification, poverty, mass incarceration. Whenever these topic were brought up, it was never a question of “who this affects?” but “why should I care it doesn’t affects me.” I would sit there fuming because they didn’t see it from my point of view, they could never see it from a black man's viewpoint. They were stuck looking through rose colored glass looking in.

I distanced myself from them. At first slowly, but then as their words angered me more and more, I began to sever ties that were being held down by a frayed knot. I don’t regret it. I became the me I am today through understanding why they can’t understand. And I am so okay with that.