I sat day after day allowing that television to teach me that the most important thing in life was to be liked. By everybody. Between its teachings at home and social life at school, I learned that the whiter you acted, the better liked you were. So I changed the way that I spoke to mimic the characters on television. I concealed every part of myself that I deemed to be too “Black.” Because my life up until then had shown me that white wasn’t just a race, it was a goal.
