It’s More Than Skin Color

This one sunny day, with the weather of ninety degrees fuming with blazing heat, I attended the Pan African festival at Dewitt Clinton Park on 11th avenue to the west forward at 54th street. This is the first time in my life I’ve ever felt with ease and happiness. I was smiling from ear to ear, opening my eyes wide with joy and shaking people’s hands as I saw the beauty of what blackness is. People dance and listen to music genres such as reggae, traditional West African music, along with Afrobeats. I loved every beat of the African drums, it feels like I am in the heart of the motherland of Africa. Women leave out their beautiful kinky natural hair that resembles the palm trees waving around. Black women rocking their afros side by side, wearing beautiful bright colorful African kentes with traditional golden African jewelry coming from the coast of West Africa. They were wearing pearly bracelets with golden necklaces and colorful waist beads that looked like fruity pebbles attached to their brown skin shining like copper color mixed with chocolate. Men were all lined up like soldiers chanting “I’M BLACK AND BEAUTIFUL”, wearing colorful dashikis, having their dreadlocks out with nice fresh haircuts smelling like bath and body works fragrance, shea butter, and honey. The festival was full of colors that represent the Pan African flag, red, black and green. Black people with all brown and darker shades gather together bringing fresh meals like oxtail soup, jollof rice, deserts, fried rice, with fruits and vegetables. What a wonderful day to be black and someone of African descent. Throughout my upbringing, I always felt the need to hide my identity because of the fear of being perceived as the negative representation of what people think blackness is. 

       Although I was a straight A/B+ student and I was adored and loved by so many people, there were some internal issues I was battling inside with: self hate. I had two different identities in school and outside of school. My close friends would call me a “Oreo” child who speaks white but outside of the layer of the Oreo cookie, I’m considered to be a black darkie who wanted to be white because how I speak English so eloquently. Every time I use my vernacular tongue, I would get treated as the black sheep around my friends, enemies, and unfortunately my teachers as well. I always had this terrible feeling that if I expressed any parts of my black identity, I would be tossed around like a loose chicken ready to get slaughtered in the factory. I felt like a discarded black sheep that wants to pollute the whole entire classroom with my vernacular English. Even though I was born in America and raised in a West African household that taught me the most about cultural preservation, I was a whole lost zebra trying to find refuge and acceptance from others. 

During my middle school year, I was bullied for having darker brown skin and also for having curly hair. I remember this one incident where I was walking to school from home and I was getting ready to prepare for my presentation for a U.S. history project. As I was walking across the street from 1424 Fulton avenue closer to the Food Bazar grocery store to Crotona Park S, I saw two of my classmates named Tina and Nicole walking towards me. I decided to walk towards Crotona Park S street heading right to Mott Hall III middle school to stay far away from Tina and Nicole. Tina and Nicole continue to catch up faster like a cheetah trying to attack their prey. Tina started to drop her reddish Calvin Klein backpack along with her iPhone 8 plus and her golden Micheal Kors watch, then proceeded to push me to the wall. She begins to use a black crayon marker, draw it on my brown skin, and then wrote “DARKIE IS ONE UGLY BLACK BI**H” on my arm. It made my blood boil as someone decided to pour water in my whole body and put fire all over my body at the stake. I pushed Tina out of the way and made her lace wig fall off, I threw the first punch on her face, then ran downstairs to the sweaty hot locker room trying to hide from Tina. Nicole opens the door and enters the locker room to slap me in the face and then I slapped her back and continued to slap her until she stopped harassing me. Lastly, I ran fast like a racing anxious antelope from the locker room to the auditorium to meet my favorite security guard named Nina. Nina is one of the security guards I trust the most. She is friendly and she is a great mother figure to me and she is one of the prettiest gems I’ve ever met. She always wears her Afro with pride and I love her scent. Her favorite signature fragrance that she always wears was Victoria Secret bombshells. Nina is a tall beautiful black woman with beautiful black eyes, lovely almond eyes that look like a lioness, beautiful puffy big lips like a pomegranate, slimmer nose and high cheekbones with a radiant shiny dark chocolate complexion. Nina saw me coming to her and as I was running away from Tina, Tina pulled my hat out, then proceed to yell, “UGLY DARKIE GOT NAPPY HAIR THAT LOOKS UNKEPT!! BIRD NEST HAIR!!” I began to break down to the floor with tears streaming down my eyes and I covered my face with my hands from the peppers sitting there staring at me trying to burn my eyes. Nina came to comfort me and took me to the security office to relax from all of the nonsense, then she called the other security guards to find Tina and Nicole to send them to the principal’s office. Nina sat down at her office, took a sheet of paper and wrote a report about what happened between Tina, Nicole, and I. Nina’s office smelled like coffee mixed with sweet caramel and Bombshells Victoria Secret. Her books, documents, and shelves are all packed up like the hulk sitting strong on the desks and tables. Nina came to comfort me again and gave me a tissue to wipe my face that was soaked with tears. Then, she proceeds to take her Afro comb along with her hair products like Olive Oil that smells like fresh apples and then she starts to comb my hair, after the incident of Tina pulling my hat off to humiliate me in front of everyone. Nina parted my hair into sections and then combed my hair until it fluffed back into a big cotton ball. As Nina finished combing my hair back into a big Afro, she sat down with me and gave me a piece of advice. She said, “Sweetie, your hair is beautiful and you should love who you are. Never change for anyone and never follow the beauty standards that they try to force upon you. Girls like Tina and Nicole have some internalized self hate issues and they are projecting their self hate onto you because you remind them of how beautiful blackness is.” When I heard Nina talk to me about self love and confidence, it made me cry a river full of tears. Looking at my middle school experience, I am glad that I came a long way to realize that black is beautiful, you do not have to succumb to people’s standards of what beauty is. This recent Pan African festival made me even love my blackness even more and more, but I wish I attended this event when I was in middle school because that would have helped boost my self confidence. I just realize that blackness is full of perfection. Our black skin and hair has this great royal essence that blossoms into a beautiful sunflower, if we realize our power as black people and use that power to stop displaying inferiority complexes. Black people can become a green powerhouse when we create our own events and movements that can inspire more of the black youth to feel empowered about themselves. Now 20 minutes later, the principal comes knocking on the door, banging on the door sounding like a dog’s barks trying to break down the door. Nina opens the door with an alarmed face wondering what will happen next. Principal Tim looks at Nina with a stern face and tells Nina to send me over to his office to have a discussion about this incident. I was clutching on my dark blue plaid skirt feeling super anxious wondering if I was going to get suspended. Things kept on circling in my mind, words were hard to spill out of my mouth, I felt like the whole world was turning against me. Then, Nina called me, “Hazel, Principal Tim needs you in the office right now! Hurry up!” I slowly began to start packing up, switch off the lights, and then leave Nina’s office. Principal Tim’s office was next door to Nina’s office, so I walked straight to his room slowly moving as a sloth trying to race into his office. Principal Tim looked at me with a smile and made it clear to me that everything will be alright. So I sat down feeling a little sense of relief, but my heart kept pumping super fast as I saw Tina and Nicole’s presence. Principal Tim allowed me to tell my side of the story and then he wanted to hear Tina’s side of the story. 

 Tina looked at me with her face turning red, her eyes looking very fierce, her fair skinned complexion was about to blow up red like a volcano getting ready to erupt. Then, she started to calm down and looked at me with tears pouring out of her eyes. Her bold eye smokey makeup was smeared up along with her Brazilian lace wig looking lopsided and some of her freshly manicured white acrylic nails were chipped out with blood gushing out of her fingernails. Tina looked at me with a stern face with tears and then apologized, “I’m so sorry, Hazel! I’m sorry for harassing you and causing all this unnecessary drama. It was all projection because I got tired of people bullying me based on my hair texture and I wish to have your fluffy Afro hair. Also, I got sick and tired of people comparing me to other natural haired girls because I wear lace wigs.” I looked at her with disgust and wanted to leave the principal’s office but Nina kept insisting that I stay and forgive Tina. Nicole was staring around the principal’s office like she was hearing loud voices in her head calling her name. Principal Tim called Nicole, then forced her to apologize to me. Nicole rolled her eyes with annoyance and reached her hand out trying to give me a handshake. I didn’t accept the handshake because it was not genuine. But Tina was genuine about how she feels about this incident and wanted to get my number, so I gave her my phone number. Then at the end of our discussion of the incident in the principal’s office, I decided to grab my Tommy backpack and leave the school premises with Tina. Lastly, we had a whole entire discussion talking about Pan Africanism, self hatred, self confidence, natural hair journey, loving our skin color, and stop trying to follow European standards of beauty. One thing I learned about my experience is that I should be proud of the beautiful God given physical features that I have, instead of trying to hide my identity. Throughout history, we always tend to fight against negative stereotypes of our people like having a slave status in this country because this negative image really makes the black youth think that they are inferior and they are not beautiful in their own skin. The black youth need to realize that there is a lot of good representation of what blackness is. We come from a history of strong beautiful men and women who fought to be free everyday and beautiful kingdoms and civilizations from Africa. We should celebrate and be proud of who we are as a people, not be ashamed of who we are.