Having observed the death of Black Americans being killed by police because of racism and police brutality, lately I’ve been feeling a sense of numbness.
One of the people we ended up hanging out with asked me if it was alright if they used the N-word. My freshman year in college, I went to Panama City Beach, Fla., for spring break with friends. I was not the “typical Black person” compared to other Black students in my school, I was told, most likely pertaining to the way that I behaved and talked, speaking “proper English.” Or so they said. In middle school, I was called an “Oreo” by other students because they perceived me as black on the outside, but white on the inside. This does not mean that I have not experienced racism in my life.
Nobody around me could understand what I was going through.
What I did struggle with was being a gay football player, feeling as if the intersectionality of homosexuality and athletics could not exist in the same space. In high and school and college I played football, where I always played with other people who looked like me. When I was a kid growing up, my race was never really at the forefront of my mind.
