I was just thinking, when I was seeing that Ethiopian girl back in the day, I bumped into a lot of Ethiopian people she knew. I found out there's a lot of Ethiopian women walking around here looking just like darker-skinned African-American women, with slightly thinner features. And a lot of them didn't have that forehead. I also couldn't tell a lot of their men over here were from a different country. A major difference with these people in general is, they seem to grow longer hair. These Ethiopians in her circle looked like they could have had a had a grandparent from a different country at the most, but you could never tell they were full Ethiopians. For this reason, I knew she was serious when she kept pointing out so many full African-Americans while we were out and about, and telling me they looked like they were from her country. She use to ask me how could so many African-Americans tell I was African-American. She thought I looked Arab.
Maybe more of us are walking around looking a little more mixed than we think, and don't realize it because we're from the hood, and don't realize a lot of Black people don't automatically see us as full brothers, the same way we see them at first sight, etc... Maybe that's why so many of us get misunderstood so many times by one another. Maybe that's why some of us find ourselves being provoked more than the average brother. I believe I fall into that category. And the provocation sometimes even comes from a lot of non--Blacks. But believe it or not, I found out I was a little guilty of this myself towards my Black brothers, when I would be out and about, and would see a relative I was known to favor, but mistook him for being a foreigner from a distance, until they did something crazy to get my attention...lol. And one of those relatives in particular, had been to prison, had been to St E's, had extraordinary strength, and was known to f**k a brother up. Anyway, I hope none of these relatives (may they rest in peace) noticed I was kinda gritting on them, like they were foreigners tryna act Black, while they were only tryna get my attention. In other words, a lot of us have that problem towards brothers who look a little mixed, even though we look a little mixed ourselves. Talkinbout looking at the man in the mirror. I know I went off topic, but it is what it is.
I found out one of the reasons that Ethiopian girl chose me, was because I didn't look like I was from this country to her. She also slipped up, and once told me it had something to do with my skintone. That was probably because she was darker than me in the summer, and lighter than me in the winter. I use to do that myself, but not anywhere near that degree. She'd change colors like a frog, depending on the season. Btw, I'm not tryna indicate Ethiopian woman prefer lighter-skinned men, especially since they have so many different skin tones. It just that this one once had something for Arabs. She said her father was an Arab from Turkey, and her mother was a dark-skinned Ethiopian. My father was light-skinned, and my mother is dark-skinned as well. Maybe that also had something to do with it ...who knows. But then again, it's very common for African-Americans to have a dark-skinned parent, and a light-skinned parent. Now when I really think back, she saw me getting a little too close to this hispanic girl working at 7-eleven. She put a stop to that fast. Btw, she claimed she was Eritrean, and not Ethiopian...and she was serious about that. But I think most of her circle identified her as Ethiopian.
I don't like to share this too much, but this was the worst I hurt a girl since I was 19.