Why I Killed the Slogan ‘Because I am Black’

It is suffocating me

No! The slogan is not suffocating me alone. It is also suffocating my white neighbors.

Sometimes in life, our mindset towards others is the major hindrance to a smooth and peaceful relationship that should have existed if all things were to be in place.

When I said my white neighbors, I mean all the persons who have a white skin color that I have met. These Include my college and office colleagues. I also want to include fellow Medium writers who are white as my neighbors. I want to include too, the owners of big publications and the editors who are white.

Back in my school days, I was always touchy in any issue relating to skin color. I lay too much emphasis on the classroom activities of the whites versus blacks. When a white student was selected to anchor a TV show in our finals, we the blacks cried foul. We all cried; “because we are blacks”.

This delusion blocked our mind that we never gave it a thought to the criteria for the selection. This keeps lingering. The slogan follows me around and clouded my sense of judgments, until recently.

Something worthy of note has happened to me recently and I decided to kill the slogan, ‘because I am black’.

I have realized that my skin color is not a problem. The problem is my mentality. The problem is the slogan that I adopted; ‘because I am black’.

I have killed this slogan because it is suffocating me. It is blurring my judgment and making me a victim of no circumstances. It is making a giant mountain out of a molehill and placing it on my head.

I used to see every achievement of my colleagues who are whites as a favor done to them because of their skin color. I have failed to take responsibility for most of my failed actions. I passed the blame to my skin color.

I joined Medium, dished out articles to my own best but curation has not come. I said to myself ‘because I am black’. But I have looked again and seen that other blacks have theirs being curated on a regular basis.

I had knocked on the various publication doors when I joined Medium but none opened their doors. I said again to myself, ‘because I am black’.

Is that so?

No!

I was accepted by 3 publications the night after I used my usual slogan. The night I concluded I was never going to be accepted because I am black.

It is not about my color, it is what I think about others. My color has no issue, my thinking and mentality towards other colors have. I have this mentality that my skin color denies me an equal opportunity with the whites. But not anymore, not any longer. That was yesterday.

I have killed it.

The slogan ‘because I am black’ is suffocating me. It is making me look inferior before my white neighbors. Now is the time to do away with it.

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