Off-White
Jordan Scavo
My skin always both limited and defined me in almost indescribable ways. Its pale yet puzzlingly jaundice-like hue so indecisive,
the way It turned pink when I laughed or purple in the cold, the way It splotched on my palms, unsure of whether to be red or white.
Skin is always so strongly emphasized through color. This color ceased to be constant, yet so many knew exactly what to call
themselves: black, white, yellow, red, brown, you name it, but me? I never knew.
My mom always told me I was cream colored. Half yellow, half white, a sort of off-white tone perhaps. She never meant it
maliciously of course, but the term off-white made it seem like I was, well, off. Abnormal, strange, unique, all true in a sense,
yet all so alienating in everything else that converges into who I am.
Why does this skin that we all possess confine us so? These minuscule cells all lined up to form this prison of a body we
each inhabit ground us in this reality that we’ll never truly be free from this bouncing of light that dictates shallow
assumptions and strict societal expectations that are so difficult to fulfill.
I know the privilege that comes with my innate melanin deficiency, of course. However, my struggles experienced apart from
this colorism are still valid. My flesh binds me to this earth and binds me to a unified human quality, but it isn’t all
that I am. Just to spite it all, I wipe It away, this cream colored, off-white hue that so strictly imprisons me and reveal
what lies beneath: a human. A human that laughs. A human that cries.
A human that feels. A human that breathes.
A human that lives.
the way It turned pink when I laughed or purple in the cold, the way It splotched on my palms, unsure of whether to be red or white.
Skin is always so strongly emphasized through color. This color ceased to be constant, yet so many knew exactly what to call
themselves: black, white, yellow, red, brown, you name it, but me? I never knew.
My mom always told me I was cream colored. Half yellow, half white, a sort of off-white tone perhaps. She never meant it
maliciously of course, but the term off-white made it seem like I was, well, off. Abnormal, strange, unique, all true in a sense,
yet all so alienating in everything else that converges into who I am.
Why does this skin that we all possess confine us so? These minuscule cells all lined up to form this prison of a body we
each inhabit ground us in this reality that we’ll never truly be free from this bouncing of light that dictates shallow
assumptions and strict societal expectations that are so difficult to fulfill.
I know the privilege that comes with my innate melanin deficiency, of course. However, my struggles experienced apart from
this colorism are still valid. My flesh binds me to this earth and binds me to a unified human quality, but it isn’t all
that I am. Just to spite it all, I wipe It away, this cream colored, off-white hue that so strictly imprisons me and reveal
what lies beneath: a human. A human that laughs. A human that cries.
A human that feels. A human that breathes.
A human that lives.