Shaded Foundations

I always knew that I was black; the problem in my case was how black I seemed. I never considered myself to be light skinned, but to my peers they considered otherwise. In middle school whenever the topic of slavery was brought up, I would become a part of the conversation prompted or unprompted. “She would be working in the house” would be followed by laughter and points in my direction. Feeling uncomfortable I would try to approach this as the best way I knew as a middle schooler trying to fit in, "I would be darker If I was in the sun, I tan really easily!" or “I would work in the fields once it gets warmer". I was desperately trying to compensate for something I already had, justifying my blackness through the color of my skin. Inherently I knew that I shouldn’t have to do this, I knew that my blackness was something that no one could take away from me, but from that moment on I knew that everywhere, anyone, and anything that interacted with would and can cause my blackness to be questioned.  My freshman year at St. John’s University was a slight culture shock for me, I had been attending a private catholic school in Manhasset, long Island just months prior. Even though there was a decent amount of black people at our school you could never forget that it wasn’t just us. 

So, to be back in a classroom where you weren’t a minority made me a little awkward. Becoming more aware of my interactions with others especially black people. I’ll never forget my class trip to the Queens Museum during its African American Exhibit. Beautiful stories of black artists experiences and cultures. Their hardships and upbringings displayed on canvases ana sculptures. I spent the day in awe of the artwork and the history behind them, proud of my identity and people, inspired even. Towards the end of the trip the teacher had asked us to take a picture as a class. The small group that I was with joined the rest of the class ready to take the photo in the front of the lobby. Bringing a part of a big class required us to take a few steps back for the entire class to fit into the frame of our professor’s tiny I-Phone. As my classmates and I shuffle to create more space, the same daunting and personally triggering topic of what type of slave you would be coming to discussion. I turned around to see who was talking, a dark-skinned girl from Brooklyn and another black student from out of state, “you would definitely be in the field " and already feeling anxious I awkwardly smiled in attempt to blend in with the unmistakable laughter from my classmates, some of the loudest laughs coming from nonblack people. The same girl looked away and made eye contact with me, smirking she confidently tells me “Why are you laughing? Shut up the hell up. You would be a slave, too. Go work in someone’s house, you're pretty enough for them to let you in”. Thankfully her comment was adrift within the laughter of my classmates, so I didn’t become the subject of the class’s discourse. Despite that, the small group that I was a part of had heard all of it along with the dark-skinned girl’s girlfriend that was amusingly lighter skinned than I was.

I turned and smiled for the picture, just numb and very embarrassed. The people in my group had even asked me if I was alright once we left the museum and the only thing I could mutter back was “yeah”.  All throughout the trip back to campus my thoughts and teary eyes said otherwise. I sat thinking over everything that I had done. Did she think I was “whitewashed” because of the way I dressed or my makeup? What did I do that created the image of a black girl undeserving of her identity? For the remainder of that semester, I closed myself off from really interacting with others, every conversation half assed like I would never see them again and even if I did, it didn’t matter to me. What mattered was my protection, my entity, my being, me, myself, and I. This is the first time since that trip that I’ve mentally and physically told this story. For a while I refused to acknowledge that something like this had actually happened to me, but I had come to the realization that this very interaction is a subcategory of the black experience. Even so, this is something that cannot come near my identity and will not define my blackness, because it’s what I make it to be.