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There is this awkward battle inside me, an African child raised in America-— a war between myself. It is an identity crisis that tears me between the customs I know and the culture and community I am both surrounded by and a part of, and truly, there are barely any allies on either side. Somehow you end up either ostracized or vilified for being all of who you are—- too African for the Americans, too American for the Africans-— or you are labeled too ghetto, too bourgeois, too country, or too anything else for people to understand. It’s almost as though everyone must categorize and label you based on their need to compartmentalize. Like they cannot comprehend fluidity so they must reduce you for their own comfort based on a sense of what is ideal by some arbitrary standard the climate of this country persists. Undoubtedly, the societal influences of where you are geographically have a hand in shaping you, but the values and traditions of your ancestors that have been engrained in you since birth, the breadth of your blood, and that sixth sense of self outweigh the outward measures that are taken to pit you against you every time.