POV

Oh, yeah. Dude, I remembered something that, like, my dad told me about being black. He said, like, "Being black is cool because you get to prove people wrong, like, every day, and, like, you sound the way that you sound..." You know, it's, like, you just prove them wrong, like, and they're just like, they probably feel a little... for profiling you. -Like, I couldn't even imagine, like, feeling like that. -Yeah, like, I was the only white kid for, like, four years at Ellis in my class, so I learned real quick that, like, "Oh...I'm in trouble." Like, right away, people were, like, mad at me for being white after our, like, first history class. -In reality, you don't have, like, as much say because you are white, and, like... -But I'm educated, though. -You're educated because you went through just as much high school as him? You know more than him? Even though that your, like, race didn't go through the same things as his did. -Because my race went through it doesn't mean I went through it. -He doesn't have, like, the same disadvantages every day that you don't have? -There's a certain class of white that's easy to be white in America, but then, like, if you're, like, trailer-trash white, then it's not easy to live in America. -I feel like it is easy, though. -Yeah. -Like, you can go and just cut your hair and go and get a...job because they're gonna to look at you like... -Like, if you're stupid, you can't do that. -When I was younger, I didn't really understand why my dad would talk about being black so much, but I remember he was like, "If you could choose again, choose to be black." And at first I didn't get it. I was like, "Why would you want to be black when all this... is happening to us?" But he explained it as, like, because we have to deal with these issues, it just makes other things that, like, my white friends would complain about, like, not even be a problem to me.