Flash back to the 7th grade and my teacher’s conversation with me after class that day. The implicit assumption that she made is this: all black people are well suited to represent black culture. As DiAngelo puts it “Because race is constructed as residing in people of color, whites don’t bear the social burden of race. We move easily through our society without a sense of ourselves as racialized subjects.” The twist is that this has been my personal experience of self-identity as well. I didn’t grow up in the segregated south like my parents, I grew up going to prep school with mostly white students who interacted with me as an equal peer. I have friends representative of the population rather than predominantly black. My parents blessed me with an education from a prestigious institution which affords me the cache I need on paper to rise above racial inequalities. In many respects, I’m more privileged than many of my white counterparts. And that is why when we were discussing The Autobiography of Malcolm X, I rarely came to class having finished the reading for the day. To my 7th grade self, the book was just as boring and foreign as A Tale of Two Cities. Just because my skin is black, it doesn’t mean that I must take a particular interest in certain material, or that I actually have unique insight into said material. If Tracy Turnblad had said to me “I wish every day was negro day”, I would have had to reply “At our house, it’s more like the Cosby Show, but you can come over any time you like!” Meanwhile, while I was called back for the non-equity tour of Hairspray on three separate occasions, the third time I was called back and made it further than before, I was typed out for not being “soulful” enough.