“You know, you’re pretty for a black girl”

Yeah, it’s going to be one of those posts. Don’t want to respond to a rant, it’d be best if you just skip over this post.

Probably won’t be resolved or wrapped with a nice pretty bow. I don’t have one. Just so ya’ll know, I’m probably one of the few people you’ll meet who likes hearing people’s negative comments more than nothing but silence. Please respond even (especially) if you are offended/uncomfortable. Think about how much history would be undone if no-one was ever offended or made uncomfortable. So, on to my rant……

This semester, I am in Urban Ministry. This class is wearing me down so much emotionally. I find myself wishing we had more than just an hour for class each day ‘cause I just want to talk and ask questions and argue and cry and laugh and hug and hug and hug. I find myself learning and relearning things about white people, specifically young, white, conservative, Christian people. I find myself being acutely suspicious and paranoid like its freshman year all over again, and I don’t like this place, and I just want to go Home where I just have to account for Miyah and not 4 million other people.

Forget about teaching these lessons about myself and my background and my life. I just want to be a college student. I just want to go to class and learn to be a teacher and eat in the cafeteria and date my future husband and have late-night conversations with my best friends and we’d braid each other’s hair and tell jokes and go on double dates with our boyfriends and sing really loud with the car windows down. I just want to be. Isn’t that what college is about? Finding who you are? Not knowing exactly who you are and explaining it to every Tom, Dick, and Harry that asks stupid questions? All those people who say there’s no such thing as a stupid question have obviously not been in my shoes at Cedarville. You’d be surprised.

I’m thinking more about societal than personal though lately, and I’m desperately trying not to be ignorant or the stereotypical nagging black girl, but society is just…..depressing. I remember my older and younger sisters when I was nine years old, hoping, wishing, praying to be white and being so depressed and melancholy when every day they were just as black as they were the day before. I used to ask them why? It seemed so stupid a thing to pray for; an impossibility. Lately, I understand, and it breaks my heart. It makes it so I can’t breathe. It makes it so I stare off in the distance just waiting for God to come explain this to me. I’ve been prejudged because of race before, but it was always an individual. With individuals, it’s different. Feels like it ain’t quite real; just stupidity breaking out in a person’s spirit like acne on their face. Wasn’t true; they were just delusional.

You mean, people think I’m less than? Not just one, two, ten, 100, but thousands? Millions? People think I’m not as smart, competent, moral, just, pure, good, wise, nice, upright, beautiful in my soul AND my face? I couldn’t place my finger on this feeling I was having. I’m ranting to an older black woman back home though, and she stops me gently. Daaarrling, she says, I get the feeling that you’re feeling inadequate. Why, though? Why must I? She says I don’t have to, and that I can know that I’m just fine the way I am. But in feeling inadequate, you wanna know how else I feel? Sad, restless, angry…….


Wait……angry? Isn’t there a stereotype about angry black women? We’re always angry, complaining, fussing, nagging, and whining about something or someone. I know it’s not true……But this is Cedarville. I CAN’T get angry. What if someone has that stereotype in their head and I don’t help any? I hate when something I do or say or how I act can be found in a popular stereotype of black women. I HATE it. I feel like white people have these assumptions about black women, and I can’t let them be right. I have to show them that it’s not true of us. What if I act like one of their stereotypes? True, I’m not all black women, but if I’m one of the first and/or only black women they meet, they’ll think the stereotype’s true. I CAN’T get angry, and yet I am. I CAN’T be a matriarch, and yet I have such a mothering personality. I CAN’T complain, and yet I want to. I’m somehow not pure enough for marriage, but I want to be married someday. I CAN’T do this, I CAN’T do that. Don’t feel this way; don’t feel that way, what if they take it this way, what if they take it that way?

I just want to be.

What about these white versions of me? The girls who act like me? Think like me? Feel like me? There are quite a few white, quirky, nerdy, poetry-writing, book-reading, thought provoking, Jesus people girls on campus. Some are louder than me; some are quieter than me. Some have different majors, but the same type of personality. Even though I “know” the answer is no, the questions still come, unwanted, unnecessary, at the most inopportune times: Are they better than me? Am I the mistake God made on His way to making the ‘Smart, Competent, Moral, Just, Pure, Good, Wise, Nice, Upright, BEAUTIFUL’ version of me? Are they the updated versions of me? If not, why do they have no problems with certain teachers that think I’m bringing down the academic standards of this great university? If not, why is it that all of the boys I’ve liked here end up liking these white versions of me? If not, why is it that older white ladies turn their noses up as if I stink when I pass them? If not, why is it that the atmosphere itself seems to scream you are not welcome here? Why, why, why? I feel like I’m nine years old again, and there are no answers to my questions all over again.

My dad told me earlier “You are just as good as any other woman on the face of the planet.” A little nagging thought came and threatened to choke the air out of my happiness. Oh, he has to say that because he’s your dad. He’s right, though, isn’t he? I’m just as good; just as deserving; just as human. Why am I treated differently?

I just want to be.

{Miyah Faith}