“Too white to be black and too black to be considered white”.

I am Creole, too white to be black, too black to be white.
Every day of my life this has been a fight.
Where exactly do I and mine fit in?
Where does the hate stop and the acceptance begin?

The darker brothers and sisters dislike us because we are so light,
And the whites hate us because we are the “dingy white”.
Confusion follows those that are like me,
because our heritage(both) makes no allowances for us to just, be.  

We became an entity on to our selves,  
a people with our own languages and sense of self.
No matter the mix, the pidgin languages we speak
are rich with culture our ancestors lived and breathed.

It is in the dances we sway to and the music we hear,
In the food we love and unique words we hold dear.
Africa is ever present in the percussion of our drums
along with the string instruments we have learned to strum.

We are dingy white to high yellow,
mulatto light to dark black “Moreno”.
We speak French, Spanish and Portuguese
but what we are not is a plague or a disease.
 
We are cultured and proud, we are learned and free
and where we choose to be, we will be,
I am Creole, too white to be black, too black to be white.
This has been a fight every day of my life.
Where exactly do I and mine fit in? Here!
Where does the hate stop and the acceptance begin? Now!
Educate yourselves; learn who you are without fear,
and embrace your cultures proudly let them always be avowed.

*Note from author: Many people confuse Creole with being Cajun, Cajun or Acadian are French white settlers in the Louisiana territories, Appalachia and other places. Creoles are by no means Cajuns; Creole is black (slave) and white (French, Spanish or Portuguese) mix. We live in the southern US and Caribbean. At one time there where even different degrees of black:
1.      Octoroon = One eighth black
2.      Mulatto = One half black
3.      Quadroon = one quarter black
4.      (Spanish) Jabáo = White skinned of Black decent with kinky hair
** Food for thought:
Creoles have no derogatory word for black people,
the word “nigger”(by the way means ignorant, not black) for us does not exist.

Gypsy Red
re-posted 7/22/2012