By SheelaR

One the biggest drawbacks of my upbringing, has been the fact that it has left me struggling to understand so much about the world as it relates to race…the world of “black & white.”

Dear America:

You might find this shocking, but the world is not just black and white.. There is an area that’s shaded with many hues of grey. Your “black and white” mentality has imprisoned you, and it starting to imprison me too. Every single day…I’m struggling with my own fence-straddling, and watching you defy reason with your back firmly against the wall. It’s overwhelming. Please check your close-minded mentalites at your front doors. The world is bigger than you think and its parameters stretch far beyond whatever closed-off community you grew up in. Not everything you like, dislike, agree, disagree, or understand…is a matter of your skin color. Those things that you find so different from you, isn’t necessarily black or white, there is without a doubt many grey areas you’ve never cared about or even considered. Get out and see the world. You’ll discover people, black, white, and grey…living life in a way that your mind has never been able to conceptualized.

“It’s just like when you’ve got some coffee that’s too black, which means it’s too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, you won’t even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to sleep.”  -Malcolm X