I am white, but as a young child, I could pass for "black", curly hair and darker skinned than my sister, who had fair skin, with straight light brown hair, and hazel eyes. In elementary school, I was called n-----. My mother kept my hair cut very close to my head (she described my hair as a rat's nest), while at the same time she spent hours combing and curling my sister's hair. My family tried to keep me out of the sun so that I wouldn't "look so dark", and at the public pool where we swam, I would get in trouble for doing the same thing that my sister did. If my sister tried to defend me by saying. "that's my sister", she would be laughed at. As I got older, I was often asked if I were from "the islands." I realized that people love to label others, then treat others how they label them.