Ever since I was three years old, I knew that I was an African-African, about 6 feet 4 inches tall, with rippled abs and a mean hook shot. Sadly, I was discriminated against throughout my childhood. I was denied a spot on the high school basketball team. I was not allowed to check the box asking for race as “African-American.” In college, they blocked my entrance into the black student fraternity. My health plan does not allow me to get the racial reassignment surgery I need so I can feel complete and centered. Instead, I am cursed with pasty white skin, which can and should be darkened to the proud hue of my ancestors, and my height, which can be fixed by the simple expedient of adding some bone structure to my legs, isn’t allowed because bigots call such a change “disfigurement.” In a world that embraces prejudice, my own sense of self is constantly under attack. Hopefully one day society will be tolerant of transracial people like myself.
“It was never easy for me, I was born a poor, black child....”