This penchant for taking away people’s blackness if they don’t agree with your politics is pernicious, a cynical gatekeeping that’s as rampant as it is deplorable.

I call it the One Thought Rule: Disagree with the orthodoxy and your “of color” card gets revoked. Toe the line or your very being will be called into question by the ideological powers that be.

Well, my being doesn’t belong to you, and you can’t take it away from me.

My failure to fit in in high school was painful, but it gifted me with a perspective that I now cherish. I was forced to discover and eventually grow comfortable with who I really am, whether anyone wishes to accept me or not. I learned to see things from the outside, to notice how constricting tribal membership and the pressure to conform can be. If Groucho Marx didn’t care to be a part of any club that would have him as a member, I’m not interested in any club that would reject me—as I define myself.