Sometimes I wish that I was invisible. If no one could see me, then they wouldn’t be able to judge me. They wouldn’t be able to judge me by how my hair looks or how I choose to dress. Most importantly, they wouldn’t be able to judge me by my skin.
The first time that I noticed someone concluded something about me for being black was when I was walking to the grocery store. I was on the sidewalk. I had my music playing in my ears and felt the cool autumn air brushing my face. When I came to a crosswalk, there was an older woman that had just finished crossing the street. As she passed me, I gave her a smile, which faded as I saw the look on her face. She one overed me and then pulled her purse closer to her body before she kept walking. I wasn’t really fazed by it. I don’t know what else I expected when my family lived in the white suburbs.
I wish that I could say that this was a one-time thing, but it wasn’t. I started to notice it happening everywhere I went. The mall, the park, even at school I see the way that some teachers would judge me. I started to learn which people to avoid and how to figure out who were the outright racists and who were the secret racists. This is skill that I think that every black person has to learn at some point in their life. It was a survival tactic. A predator can’t hunt the prey if the prey are too good at hiding.
Things only got worse in 2020 when the George Floyd protests started. I began to hear people coming up with reasons why the protests were stupid and why they didn’t matter. They tried to come up with things that were way worse that racism:
- Poverty – black communities have the highest poverty rates of people in America
- Mental illness – black people in America often do not seek mental help because it is seen as a sign of weakness in the black community
- Women’s inequality – black women in America are at the most disadvantage
- Homophobia – people can pretend they’re straight but I can’t pretend I’m white
These are only a few of the things that I heard.
During this time, I also heard a lot of different things from the black people that I knew. Many said that if I didn’t want to go to a protest, then I was a racist against my own race. I wasn’t really bothered by it because this was common in the black community. If the things that I liked didn’t align with the stereotypical things that black people are supposed to like, then I was labeled as being ‘fake black’ or ‘wannabe white.’ However, when I did like stereotypical black people things, I was told to get different interests so that I wasn’t labeled as being ‘ghetto’ or ‘ratchet.’ There was no winning.
As a black person in America, I have come to realize that no matter how forward-thinking we become as a society, there are always going to be people that are going to make assumptions about me based on the color of my skin. White people don’t have to worry about being jumped just for taking a stroll on the wrong side of town or being hate-crimed when driving through the back roads of town. They don’t have to worry about making their hair look ‘presentable’ for a job interview or think about giving their babies white middle names that they can go by as a safeguard.
Black people should not have to constantly be on guard, trying to avoid the racists while also trying to overcome the stigmas that are present within their own community.