It is no secret to anyone that knows me that my least favorite part about me is my skin color. The fact that I am black. I hate it. I really hate it. I’m not proud of it. I do remember singing James Brown’s, “I’m Black and I’m Proud” but at the time, I didn’t realize the gravity of what it really meant to be black.
Before 1st grade, I attended smaller schools, mostly with white kids. A few Latinx, a few black, but mostly white. I wouldn’t say it was a culture shock when I got to 1st grade where at least half my class was black or some other non-white race, but it was pretty close to it. Not once before, outside my family, have I been surrounded by so many different people before.
It’s no surprise that I wasn’t liked right away. A chunk of these kids had known each other for a few years. By this time, I was depressed. No one really knew it, but the same year, my grandmother died. She was my everything, as far as I was concerned. I still remember thinking about her death and being sad a lot throughout my childhood.
Top this off with a low self-esteem. My voice was always brought up by other people in conversations, because it was deeper than the other girls. They’d tell me I was going to the wrong bathroom, because I was going into the girl’s bathroom. I still had my group of friends, in my after-school program and in classes, but it wasn’t until middle school when things really went downhill.
I was being excluded from things simply because I wasn’t “the right type of black.” I was an “oreo”; black on the outside, white on the inside. I wasn’t the stereotype or like most people in my class at the time. I wasn’t into rap, I didn’t like fried chicken, kool-aid, or watermelon, and I wasn’t into the same type of activities as the others in my class. I felt like I was born in the wrong body.
And of course, I was black, and not many people (for some reason) wanted to hang out with people outside their race. It was segregated by some social standard, not by law. People separated themselves by choice, but also because others saw it as a negative to be around so many different races. I didn’t see this much later in my life, but I definitely noticed it in middle school. While I had friends of many races, you could easily tell who was and who wasn’t 100% comfortable with me.
Even though I was black, I had a hard time fitting in with the other black girls. We all did our hair differently. I was into straightening it, others were into complicated styles and braids. I went into school one day with a bun on the top of my head. I was made fun of; to the point where the art teacher had to put me in the storage room and talk to the other girls. I was getting my hair done later that day, the bun was just temporary. But I realized not even black girls wanted to be around me.
I had found Twilight and Demi Lovato around the same time in middle school. I was into the whole look of Twilight which had this dark vibe, and I loved Demi Lovato’s ballads. Around the time she went to the hospital for treatment was when the name-calling got worse and the support of other black girls got smaller. I was being called, “Demi Lovato’s Mini Depressed Girl” or some crap like that. Or even, “The Black Demi Lovato,” because of my (undiagnosed) depression and Lovato’s (rumored at the time) bipolar disorder. It sucked that I had a small group of girls to turn to. But I really began to hate being black. I hated it more than I hated my life. I hated it.
I got to high school, and after an awful ninth-grade year, from a racist history teacher to terrible support from the administration, I went to a new school. A private school that was predominately white.
I fit in almost as much as I wanted to right away. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I belonged. People welcomed me. People wanted to befriend me. I even remember bio class on the first day where people wanted me to sit with them, but I had a choice of two tables full of people who wanted me to sit next to them! That was huge. They weren’t looking at my skin color or how I acted. They just saw me as someone new and possibly coo (I’m not cool but I was new). In the same class a few weeks later, I looked down and saw my black hand. I hadn’t thought about my race since I got to this school. Weird.
For a while, in that school, I felt like my race didn’t matter. I was wrong. It did matter, but it wasn’t as obvious until senior year. This kid that hated me called me the n-word and said that, “it’s not racist because he didn’t mean to harm.”
I lost faith at that point. I still didn’t have much hope. With the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the lack of love and compassion and empathy for minorities, I really wished that I was white. Imagine all the opportunities I could have had if I was white. All the friends and connections I could have had if I was born a different color. I wouldn’t have to face this kind of disrespect. No one would be calling me the n-word.
When Trump became “President”, I knew it was all going to crash down. Not only was I black, but I had female parts and was not straight. I was--I am queer. I’m not straight and I’m not female. I just have the parts that make me female. But I knew, a queer person of color still didn’t have a lot. Let’s completely ignore my (now diagnosed) depression for a second because even if I was neurotypical, I was still black and I was still queer and still not conforming to any gender binary.
2017 has opened my eyes. I’m starting to see how awful the world can be--how awful the world is. It’s awful. It’s dirty. It’s filled with people who don’t deserve any form of respect, but because of some title they have, they get that respect, and people who deserve the world and love.
The Women’s March really inspired me. I did not attend, and I felt really worthless. Of course, I remembered, I was a writer. Not just any writer, a writer with experience. A writer who can open people’s eyes whether they want to see the disgusting world we live in or not. I can talk about these things. I can show people this sort of life I live. I can show them the negatives and the cons because right now, this world is filled with very few positives and pros. It’s all bad.
A day doesn’t go by without me thinking if America is going to be attacked. A day doesn’t go by without me wondering if anyone I know would become the next hashtag. Not a day goes by without my mind wandering off, going back to those dark thoughts: Why me? Why was I the one who was black? Why was it me?
People tell me this kind of thinking is unhealthy, but what else can I think about? Solutions? I can try. But there are so many obstacles. While I try driving down this road to a better world, I can’t see too far ahead because there will always be something that blocks the vision. The vision to being seen as equal, regardless of my skin color.
Ignorance, hate, fascists, Nazis, and everyone against equality.
I’m tired of wanting something as small as tolerance. I want full acceptance. I want my skin color to just be my skin color, not some deciding factor of whether or not I’m a good person to hang around.
No matter how kind I was, I still came across awful people and disgusting excuses for humans who judged me starting with my race. No matter how hard I tried, I realized that I always have to fight.
I didn’t want to fight anymore.
But then, I watched Hidden Figures. Those women, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, and Mary Jackson, were all incredible and intelligent. But because of their race, they had to fight even harder to be seen. And they made history and opened up a path for all of the people of color. But they had to fight.
They had to fight.
I have to fight.
We have to fight.
Fight.
