I grew up in the suburbs.
My high school was predominately White but we had a bussing program that bussed in Black kids from the inner city. So there was about 1,000 kids in the school with about 100 Black kids bussed in from Boston.
[On a side note, I looked up the proper spelling for bussed and bussing. It can be spelled bused or bussed, bussing or busing]
I hung out with other Black kids from the suburbs. We listened to Hip Hop and liked Black girls and went to Black parties. I was cordial with the Black kids from Boston but we didn't have much in common.
But then there were the Black kids that had White parents. They didn't have a "Black identity" (whatever that means). They talked White, they dressed White and hung out with White people. They wouldn't even hang out, or speak to us.
All that is to say, if you're Black and grow up around White people you're going to be weird, unless you hang out with other Black people in your same socio-economic class.
You can tell when a Black person grew up around White people. They're not comfortable around Black people, especially hood/ghetto Black people.
I was kinda weird in high school, but not as weird as the Black kids that had White parents.
I can relate to your story, in some way.
I grew up uptown, in the poorer corners of a mixed-class populated Montreal borough. Single mother, estrangled father who fell lethally ill in his homecountry years later, multiple siblings and cousins, very extended families from both sides, one of the early kids of our mostly second-generation immigrant siblinghood who was born on foreign soil far away from Africa, a foreign citizenship, but a not so-foreign language due to our persisting colonial heritage.
I was one of the younger children within our fratry: so after our neighborhood get struck pretty badly by the uprise of gangsterism and street hustling from the late-1990s to 2000s, how it impacted one of my older brothers and endured the rebellious streaks of my older siblings, my mother did pretty much found an excuse to shelter I and my youngest brother from outside.
We barely played with other kids besides our older siblings's few friends and cousins; were raised up to spite the Arabs, North Africans, Indian Ocean Creoles and Haitians as much they disliked us and rarely heard the littlest positive remark about our own national diasporic community besides perhaps their stereotypical tastes for their pompadouresque dressing, melomania and pompous women thinking they're making their way atop of the game.
I and my youngest brother were equally born neuro-atypical and grew tubby during much of our childhood, which consequently did not help to bond woth other kids. We get frequently bullied from school to school. At my teenage years and later years, my mother's influence was alas already done: I had an European accent-- an another colonial legacy that many Africans doesn't fancies at all because of its classist, self-racist roots. The bearing and mannerisms of somebody people may find either weird or stuck-up let alone posh (given that my family hasn't always struggled on the bottom hole of the social-economical hierarchy) , an interdiction from going into any school sport team. Other black and brown kids believed I was either mentally challenged or some creepy momma's boy, while white kids hated me more because my presence transpired exceedingly cues of faltering poshness (and French-speaking white folks in Quebec aren't fond of both posh people, Continental Frenchs and immigrants of color who showcases being superior to them whatsoever) .
I never fitted well anywhere. I was always the smartest one in the room, the nerdiest one, the prudest one, the horniest one, the blackest one, the "you're-not-black-enough" one, the ambiguously black one, the youngest one, the fattest one, the slimmest one, the "wasted-athletic-potential" one, the sportiest one, the strongest one, the unmanliest one, the manliest one, the eccentric, the "retard" , the "simpleton" , the African one, the Canadian one, the x-ethnic group one, the heathen one, the ultrareligious one, the one no girl looks upon, the one any fake buddy around resents because these same girls now looks too much upon, and so on and so forth. Anywhere, anytime. Even online. Even sometimes here.
I don't have any friend: only contacts and a fewer people who likes to vent upon me. I prefer this way for now, anyway. I may understand Willow's frustrations. Although mine aren't this challenging: she's just geniunely weird. At least, she's wealthy, had two lovely parents, a few friends and one sibling who just doesn't nudge his head when you're venting and abovestood her struggles even better than anyone simply because his are a notch even worse.