Family Memories,

When I was younger nearly my whole extended family lived within a few block radius of each other. Nearly all of them on welfare and ignorant as hell. Dispite having such a large amount of family in such a close proximity to us me and my mother were always treated as somewhat outcast.
We acted different, We talked different, We had different interest and different goals in life. Later in life it became clear that the main difference was intelligence.

We were smarter than them and they hated the idea. They would say quite often that we acted "white" on many occasions. I belive it was more of a code word for "intelligent" now. when we did things they deemed "white" we were actually doing something that showed we had intelligence. When we "talked white" we were actually speaking with a decent grasp of the english language. They wished us to be as ignorant as possible.

Indeed, My childhood is full of times when my relatives would try to dumb me down to the level of thier kids. They would pressure my mother to stop doing anything that would promote what they deemed "Too White". Buy him some toys and clothes instead of buying him the books he want. Stop making him stay in and do homework after school let him just play with the rest of the kids. Sometimes they would get though to my naive mother or at the very least she would give in to get them to leave her alone.

One of those times being when my school wanted to put me in a magnet school that had a gifted class. Going into the second grade I was already reading books meant for kids who were 3-4 years older than I was. My relatives had a shit fit at the idea that I would be going to some "white neighborhood" at thier school and moved in to make sure my mother didn't send me there. Saying I would be surrounded by racist who would pick on me. Saying that they didn't want me because I was "smart" or gifted in anyway but just wanted a token negro kid. They even said I seemed "white enough" and sending me there would turn me into a full fledge "Oreo"[Black on the outside white on the inside...] or uncle tom. They harassed my mother more than they ever had. So she relented, Something she says she regrets to this very day. They won.

During the time mom would go to school[they also got on her plenty of times about going to college]I had to stay with an aunt and use to hate it. When I was younger I had good habits about doing my homework. I got yelled at for doing it right away instead of putting it aside and not doing any of it like her kids. Once she even ripped up a new Encyclopedia brown book my mom had bought for me since I wanted to read it instead of playing nintendo. Saying "Stop being a fag and go play with your cousins".

Something that ended up being said quite a bit during childhood.