There are few things I enjoy more than showcasing my intelligence to unsuspecting onlookers. For reasons unbeknownst to me, playing Jay-Z in my headphones and turning my Lakers hat ever-so stylishly to the back seems to conjure up the impression of an uneducated, underprivileged youth.
A teacher once referred to me as “dressed like Will but well-spoken like Carlton,” an ignorant platitude clearly spoken by someone who’s only impression of African-American daily life was the 1990’s sitcom “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.”
Gross over generalizations, and dare I say mildly racist remarks used all but exclusively for Black adolescents, like these make the seemingly most casual situations awkward and uncomfortable.
Over my 17 years, I have acquired a somewhat decent level of tact, decent enough to know how to correct someone with Roland Martin’s passion, but Colin Powell’s words. For a long time I have forgiven and forgotten, but as my formative years dwindle and preparation to enter college quickly approaches, I’m putting all of my non-ethnic minority counterparts over the age of 30 on notice: never should you have, and never should you again refer to a young Black youth as “well-spoken.”
Well-spoken is a term used to describe a coworker’s 4-year-old child, the German couple next door attempting to learn English, or a parrot after leaving MSNBC on in the living room all night. Not a teenager that has done nothing more than string together an eight-word sentence.
Black children do not immediately enter the ninth grade without ever having previously attended primary school. Nor do they exit class and have recess while the rest of their classmates stay to review sentence structure and practice cursive writing. They take the same standardized tests, read the same books and complete the same assignments as their fellow students.
Race is not indicative of aptitude. I am not an exception to what your normal expectation should be.
I don’t want anyone to live their life in a perpetual state of politically correct fear; I just want people to be honest with themselves in regards to the limits of their own bias.
In conclusion, if you find yourself at a social gathering one-day and the mood quickly darkens based upon a comment similar to the one above, don’t say you haven’t been warned.
Editor’s note: Views expressed in this column are the writer’s and not necessarily those of the Recorder Newspaper.
