my 3rd attempt

Last two times I wrote a post about my personal experience as a black adopted human living in America, Imgur took them down because they violated the terms and conditions, which I don’t believe they did.

Anyway, this is my third attempt, which I feel might get taken down also. (There will be some backstory for context.)

Being adopted into an American family, my experience was “white.”

English is my second language. Important to note: I have traveled a lot, and I was homeschooled most of my life. I learned to speak english quickly, but I didn’t learn to read or write it until I was about twelve or thirteen.

There were two period of times when my parent’s work made it so that I had to go to public, and private school.

The first time, was a private school. I was in fifth grade at the time. I was doing all the work of the fifth graders— however, I had to do 2nd and 3rd grade grammar. The teacher even made my book look like I was in fifth grade, after my parents told her i was new to the US. She wanted me to fit in.

There was this day in class when this girl ended up getting a glimpse at my grammar book’s contents. She noticed I was years behind. She told the other kids and they made fun of me for it; despite knowing that English was my second language. That year didn’t go too well for me…I ended up going back to homeschool.

Now, whenever the topic of race came up, my parents had the same talks with me as with my white siblings. I remember when I was a kid we watched “The Blind Side” (2009). In a scene in the movie, someone said the N word. Us never having had experience with the word, my white mom said we should not say it because it was bad and offensive.

The second time: My parent’s job again made it so that I had to go to public school. One day in the hallway, this black kid, in passing, said, “what’s up my n***a!” Having heard that was a “bad word.” I went to our white principal and told her. she was a bit confused. She sent me back to my classroom. I was upset because she didn’t do anything about it.

When my dad picked me up later that day; when he asked me how the day was, I responded with my experience with the kid and the principal. My white dad then had to explain to me why it’s okay for other black people to say that to each other.

Even though I was nine years behind my peers, I learned to speak English in eight months. I graduated high school on time, then college. I became an English teacher – teaching English in Europe and also Asia.

In my college experience (I wrote a post about it that got taken down), I never fit in a particular spot. I went to an expensive private school. There was the “black table”, which I never really felt welcomed. The “white table” never really fully accepted me either — mostly because a large majority of them were coming from a white contexts. We were all teenagers so I can’t really blame them.

Since it was an expensive college, the majority of them were coming from predominately upper class schools — which statistically were predominantly white.

The thing is, growing up, I hung out with adults due to my parent’s job. The majority of the people who I spent time with were white. I never experienced racism or any micro agression. I thought that was normal.

It wasn’t until I became an adult, on my own, navigating the world that I realized that I was sheltered to that aspect of life.

Now in my mid twenties, I started a company, I have paid employees.

I have always stayed to myself. I have always wanted friends. Friendships really matter to me. And I don’t know why, but the people who I typically end up being friends with are usually white (my age). Despite this fact, after some time in the relationship, there always seems to be a point in time where some of them start saying racist things that make me uncomfortable, which makes me doubt myself and the things I am doing.

I have had to overcome a lot. Being put up for adoption did something to my psyche. Even knowing it was the best choice that my biological mom could have made at that time, still hurts. Spending the first nine year of my life in a third-world country brought a lot of trauma. (I am still dealing with it).

It’s really frustrating that despite all my efforts, my skin color is another element that I have to deal with. I have worked hard to get to where I am. I recently heard one of my white friends say after he found out about my salary, “You have broken the system.” But it wasn’t said in a positive way. His wife then responded, “He is jealous.” Even knowing that might be the case, it hurts that he would think I wasn’t capable of doing it.

He has said other things too, but I am having a hard time confronting him about them. It happens so much in my life that I feel like giving up —just dealing with it internally.

(https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LTgahyvBMk4) “I think of myself as a man,” — Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.