Over the years I have had to learn how to stay true to myself, and have been faced with the challenge of finding my identity. Growing up being one of the only black females and/or minorities in my early education has been a challenge, but ultimately has been one of the leading factors in me learning more about myself, what I want, and what I will and will not accept for my life.

From kindergarten through eighth grade I attended majority white charter schools, and eventually a public majority white republican high school. All of my life I have struggled with finding where I best I fit in, and furthermore with embracing myself versus trying to conform to what society wanted me to be, or thought I should be. Every day I would ask myself, where do I belong? Who am I? I have always been told, "you are the whitest black person I have ever met", or am assumed to be mixed because I am light skinned. These judgments have made me really take a second to think about how I want to be identified as, and what I want for my life.

In my high school I always found myself surrounded by majority white friend groups because they were the people that were in my classes. I always took honors and AP classes when I could, and quickly realized that the majority of my African American peers chose to take the standard classes, not because they didn't have the ability or intelligence to do well in my classes, but because they did not want to apply themselves and be stuck in a majority white classroom.

This is something that continued to grind my gears throughout my high school career, because I was always the minority, and wanted to be able to be around people that looked like me and believed in the same things as I did. Sometimes this made me feel uncomfortable in the classes I was in, or even to talk about issues related to my race and gender because I knew I was always going to be framed as playing the black card. According to my white peers, I was the one black girl who always complained about the double standard for whites versus blacks, and was biased when it came to social issues because I am black myself.

In high school I was so consumed with fitting in and how I appeared to others that I lost sight in who I was. I made sure to always be on my A game, because I did not want to be perceived as being unintelligent or naive like the typical stereotype that society likes to place on black people. In fact, I even at times felt like I couldn't associate with my fellow black peers because I didn't want people to think that I didn't care about my education. Although this idea may seem childish and stupid now, it was very real for me and something that molded how I interacted with people of my race.

I hate to admit it, but I remember a time when I thought that I was not black enough to hang out with the other black people at my school, because I was never around them, and never invited to their social events. This thought played a major role in my decision to attend The University of North Carolina at Greensboro versus A&T for instance, because I thought that I could never make it at an HBCU, a historically black college or university, because I thought I wasn't "black enough."

I wanted to be white so bad when I was younger. I would always ask my mom to straighten my hair, and would try to dress preppy like the rest of my white friends, and wanted to wear makeup in middle school, but then one day I said to myself, what am I doing? What is the point in all of this? I came to an epiphany and finally realized that I am never going to be white, and by continuing to pretend to be somebody that I am not, I was only hurting myself.

I am Elise Williams. I am an 18 year old educated black women on the verge of adulthood, and I love my race! I am an intelligent, humorous, witty, outgoing ray of sunshine, and I should not let my peers and outside factors deter me from embracing who I truly am. I am not just your typical black girl. I am strong, I am confident, I am motivated, and I am proud to be a black women in America. I have learned to accept my curls and naps. I have learned to love me and my skin, because God only made one me, and if I do not love myself, then who will?

As an African American woman I am part of the back bone for America. I am independent, creative, faithful, and persevering, and I refuse to ever let another person white or black make me feel like I am less than or beneath them because I am not what they want me to be. As Maya Angelou said, " A woman in harmony with her spirit is like a river flowing. She goes where she will without pretense and arrives at her destination prepared to be herself and only herself." Black is beautiful, black is strong, black is me. By God's grace I have learned to embrace the skin i'm in, and I thank the God every day for letting me be me.