#imjussayin: it doesnt matter if you're black or white

those were inspiring words spoken in our history and continue to reverberate in our thoughts and hearts. RIP MJ. but no, im not here to talk about the legend that was (and with that RIP Lolly Jackson). im here to bring up an issue that was brought to my attention this weekend by my aged father.

so, sitting at a fabulously trendy lunch, we get onto the topic of marriage and such. i tell him that i probably wont get married, not because i dont want to, but because i am insanely picky, and the the truth hiding beneath this 'pickiness' is pure fear. anyways, so he chirps that i will probably never get married due the kind of males i surround myself with. obviously i jump to agreement and launch into an explanation as to how young, lost, misguided and lacking in the balls department these guys i hang out with are (as lovely as they are with all of their amazing itunes!), but it comes to light that my father and i are on completely different pages. his response was, 'its because you dont hang out with black men'.

this statement stumped me, and i was actually lost for words. i didnt know what to take from this comment or how to internally process it. all i could reply was, 'sorry g, i just look at people. a guy is a guy is a guy'. and that was that. we didnt elaborate, we didnt continue. i think because we both knew that we had hit a sensitive topic in a sense, and that neither of us were going to understand the other parties argument.

my issue with this statement was this: granted, we all have different skin colours, and inherently different belief systems, its just the way that we are. its great. but is it on this premise that one must choose a potential life partner? or a friend? i have black friends, i have white friends, i have coloured friends, and although i do realise that we are all of different skin colours, its the person on the inside that i want to be friends with. with whom i want to engage. and it disturbed me that my father made it appear that that wasnt important. im sure that that wasnt what he meant. he probably meant that 'like is supposed to stick with like'. but is that something that can still be enforced in this day and age? have we moved on to a different evolutionary path? do people choose partners based on their race? what is it?

i was brought

up in the post-1994 generation. black kids were allowed to go to white schools and have white friends. in fact, it was encouraged. we had sleep overs at melissa's house, and cara's mom would drive us to hockey practice. this was the norm, hardly the exception. my parents continuously encouraged my sister and i to look at people not their colour, so thats what we did. today my best friend is white. is it because of the colour of her skin that i have chosen this? is it because of who she is and how she makes me feel?

i grew up, like many other, in a world different to that of my parents. i grew up in a 'white world'. my sister-from-another-mother and i were discussing this, and she made an interesting point. she said, 'rabi, because of the way we have grown up, we will never fit in with white people or with black people'. she had hit the nail on the head. it was crazy. she continued with, 'we dont fit in the black people because we didnt grow up in the townships and went to predominantly white schools, and we dont fit in with the white people because, lo and behold, we are black'. i raised my arms and shouted 'testify!', because she was totally correct. i couldnt fault her on that, and she had put into words what i had been feeling these past 22 years.

this brought me to the point where i asked if we ever wanted to fit in anywhere. we aren't black enough and we are too white. there is no space for people of our kind, we just find other like minded individuals if one wants to be a part of a group to indentify with. which brought us to the conclusion that, because of this, people are forced to identify us according to who we are, not what we look like. yes, i am a black woman, but that hardly defines who i am on the inside. 'awesome' is how i liked to be defined (if one is REALLY looking for a definition).

bringing my back to my dads comment. i didnt respond because i didnt feel the need to respond. for me, a life partner is someone i can identify with and who makes me happy and totally understands me. the colour of his skin is just the carrier of the soul. everyone has inherently different values and beliefs, and has to deal with consolidating them in their home. the people in my life are cherished and loved because of the value they add to my life, not because they fill a quota. we are taught to love people regardless of their exterior (which is difficult at times, cos lets face it, we are all inherently prejudiced. lets not lie here), an