I vividly remember the first time I saw someone my age sitting with their legs crossed, one lanky, hairless limb draped delicately over the other. I was the tender age of eleven and entering my first year of sixth grade in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, after transferring from an out-of-district elementary school. As I scanned my unfamiliar environment, I immediately understood how the cliché “new kid” experience in teen dramedies was terribly inadequate. I resolved that those awkward classroom introductions and solitary bathroom stall lunches would not be my eternal cross to bear, a determination stemming from my prior popularity in a tiny elementary school in Southfield, Michigan. Naturally, I assumed this would make my transition to middle school effortless.

That crisp autumn morning, when I entered the sixth-grade homeroom, an insidious insecurity covered me in goosebumps. A flush of heat graced my face and instantly my stomach dropped. The walls began to close in; I stood out like a sore thumb, asphyxiated by my own Blackness. Much to my astonishment, the real issue with being the new kid wasn’t laced in the media’s portrayal of stereotypical middle school anxieties. This was different, something I would not be able to fully articulate until decades later.

There I was, a classic case of big fish in a small pond, suddenly thrown into an enormous ocean with unimaginable depths and creatures. I was completely out of my element. The precarious body language of my new peers made this obvious. Something as simple as the way they crossed their legs appeared as though they were otherworldly. I was dumbfounded, amused even, as a chilling sensation struck an internal chord I never knew existed. Every signal in my body warned me that I stood at the threshold of unfamiliar territory, a space that might not be safe, yet one I had no choice but to enter. I thought, what a peculiar portal… Because where I came from, kids didn’t sit like that. We didn’t have desks like that or lockers. We didn’t have the freedom to wear what we wanted, or a cafeteria with options to buy lunch, or a full-blown library with a staff, or white kids. We didn’t have an ocean of white kids! Now all of a sudden I, this once big fish, forgot how to swim.

My body, along with my embarrassment, gradually settled. But before I could catch my breath, another wave came crashing in, and I tossed in the riptides of my juvenile thoughts flooding the cracks of my psyche. Like rapid fire – “I look like a boy,” “my hair is heinous,” “what am I wearing?” “Are those underwire bras they’re wearing?” “Thongs?!” “Where did they buy that from?” “Why does everyone seem to know each other?” “I can tell those are the popular girls.” “Was he on my bus? I hope he doesn’t recognize me.” “She’s so skinny.” “Will I be forced to introduce myself?” “Their parents let them wear makeup?” “That’s the clothing brand my sister mentioned people wear.” One after the other, as if my brain had been hijacked by a virus, the thoughts didn’t stop…

Until the age of eleven, I grew up in Black and Brown spaces where my environment affirmed that I was part of the majority, and so naturally, that’s what I believed. My humble beginnings started in Southfield MI, on Tavistock Trail. For context, Southfield is 65.3% Black and 25.5% white, and the remaining residents are a mix of Asian American, Native American, and Latino or Hispanic, or multiracial. Here I played up the street with the Smiths, another Black sister duo whose cousin would often visit. We’d spend our afternoons on their backyard swing-set singing TLC’s “Unpretty” with laser-blue popsicle-stained lips. As the swings would ascend, we’d sing, “You can buy your hair if it won’t grow” at the top of our lungs, “You can fix your nose if he says so,” would clumsily spill out our mouths in between laughter as the swings descended. No one really knew what they were singing. The promiscuity in songs back then was digested, but never metabolized. So, when one of my childhood friends was old enough, she did go on to fix her nose, and it felt like foreshadowing of how unpretty I’d become in Bloomfield Hills, where the racial composition is 86.9% white.

Of course, in elementary as children, we would tease one another—it always felt like fair game when spewing disses against our own kind. “AFRICAN BOOTY-SCRATCHER” would be hurled across the open kickball field, a venom that stung like the red rubber ball landing on the back of your leg, marking you out. Though most of us grew up in predominantly Black areas, we were not immune to the global impacts of anti-African sentiments in a world that rotated on anti-Black racism. How could we be when self-hatred and lack of self-knowledge uphold racialized capitalism and other systems of oppression that prey on Black bodies? My childlike innocence blinded me to why we adopted these ideologies, and the ways they manifested, for example, in a ferocious game of kickball. My animosity towards these systems that sustained white supremacy was delayed, simply because I didn’t know any better. At that age, none of us did. This emotional repression would continue until my first African Black Diaspora course in college that unearthed all the rage.

I’ve always been curious about other Black people’s experiences that deviated from a Black homogeneous environment to help me make sense of what I had gone through. What I’ve understood when I meet other Black people, particularly women who’ve been socialized in predominantly white academies, either as students or staff, is they often mention how their experience has had a negative or detrimental effect on their physical, mental, career, academic, and developmental success. On the other hand, these same negative stereotypes have a different impact on our Black male counterparts.

Token Black boys reap the benefits of embracing stereotypical projections of Blackness and masculinity. The Black boy is admired for his athletic capabilities (if he possesses them), and even looked up to by his white male peers. White boys’ proximity to Black boys, especially if they are athletic, allows them the chance to associate with being “cool,” which naturally elevates one’s social disposition in that environment. In a study conducted by Simone Ispa-Landa at Northwestern University, she found that Black boys strategically fed into stereotypes that made them seem “tough” or “street smart,” resulting in being welcomed into suburban social cliques despite enacting gender and race in narrow ways. In opposition, Black women were deemed “ghetto,” “aggressive,” and undesirable with neither the Black nor white boys showing any interest in dating minority girls. By definition, Black girls are excluded by hegemonic femininity rooted in White Supremacist and European beauty standards, as well as patriarchal behaviors and attitudes rooted in purity, fragility, and virtue—it is their blackness that excludes them.

Southfield and Bloomfield Hills carried unique messages of undesirability. Despite being in a Black and Brown school, drawings were colored with the “peach” Crayola crayon, we’d engage in conversations over who had “good hair,” friends desired swishy long ponytails and lighter skin, or even in later years the desire for an intimate experience with a white boy. In Bloomfield, I was accused of having a crush on the two other Black boys in middle school. As I entered high school my hook-ups were nestled in between secrecy and shame, never an outward declaration from the same mouth who dared to pursue me in the first place. Call it a preference or a type, but at some point you never really examine the roots of your desires, or dare to decolonize them. I wonder how many people’s inner Black child finally feels fulfilled as they walk down the aisle to greet a reflection that desperately affirms their enoughness?

I struggled with the stereotypical perceptions of Blackness projected onto me from not only the white community, but the Black community as well. This created a cognitive dissonance and dissociative identity. In fact, research shows that Black students in predominantly white schools report experiencing this cultural discontinuity. Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings discusses how this disconnect between home cultural practices and school norms can impact emotional engagement and academic performance (Ladson-Billings, G. 1995. “But That’s Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy.” Theory into Practice, 34, 159-165).

I never felt this disconnect negatively impacted my school performance, as much as it pushed me to meet the interpersonal and societal expectations put on me—”Black girl magic,” “Black excellence.” I was told that I had to work twice as hard, to “be a leader, not a follower.” I internalized that meant twice as pretty as well—if I could achieve a certain look, a certain size, I’d be worthy, I’d be excellent. I had no outlet for such big emotions as a young Black woman buried six-feet deep in self-loathing and what evolved into a little over a decade of disordered eating. I’d be medically overlooked and gaslit, or outright dismissed, because anorexia and bulimia had a certain image that I apparently didn’t fit. My relationship with my body and food reflected the emptiness left behind from never having an opportunity to grieve life before Bloomfield Hills. Whatever the case may be, you never catch a break with the twice as hard mentality.

Black kids are inundated with so many messages of how to show up in life, because those who are meant to guide us are gridlocked into fear that has become reality that if we don’t we might not have a place, at “their” table or dare I say, in the world—as Black excellence is often used to justify our humanity on a scale we shouldn’t be measuring up to in the first place. Do we flourish under these circumstances? Of course. Seldom do we not have examples of those who’ve risen to the occasion. But who could we be if we didn’t have to? How would we feel if we didn’t carry the weight of communal hope? Will there ever be freedom to exist without posturing and performing, and still be embraced, nurtured, and loved?

Maybe the microaggressions of being the only one built up over decades doesn’t compare to staring down the barrel of a gun at the hands of your worst systemic nightmare, but everyone reaches a breaking point—a trigger inevitably gets pulled. So, no, at eleven I never understood the microaggressions I experienced that came from all sides. Why was it that in a nighttime game of freeze tag, my white friends would taunt, “Where’s Jordan, we can’t see her!” “Who turned out the lights?” But leave my Southeast Asian American friend whose skin was the exact same color as mine, alone. How teachers would always call me the name of the other Black girl who looked absolutely nothing like me, and then dismiss it like it meant nothing. On the other hand, I was accused of “talking white,” “acting funny,” even being told that I thought I was better than someone else because of that. Though they weren’t wrong, it wasn’t intentional, or for reasons I’d been accused of, but eventually, I had changed. I sounded different, dressed different, felt different. It no longer was because I wanted to be popular or liked; I had integrated quite well. I had a group of friends I enjoyed spending time with, I was invited to bar and bat mitzvahs, pool parties, and sleepovers. The tumultuous landscape was on the inside, because I had just created a new normal without ever acknowledging how I got there—a disembodiment ritual, without closing the loop.

I was a bit in shock to have to accept the fact that being in predominantly Black spaces made me anxious; it was like they’d figure out that I wasn’t “Black enough.” Still, I resented being the token Black kid in my friend group. I was mentally overburdened with trying to be seen as desirable, valuable, worthy. When what I truly wanted was to be seen in my wholeness. For there to be a landing space to integrate and process what was happening. Or an echo chamber, which affirmed that despite, despite, despite, I made it. This is what arrival looks like, and it no longer has to be sacrificial. It’s safe to come home to the totality of you, and all that contributes to it.

I rebelled against being put in a box because it felt unnatural, but I was hyper aware of the boxes being created for me. So, I would silence myself when necessary, and people-please as a method to control someone’s perception of me. Because at least then I had “control,” or what I believed served as a buffer to the projections. Therefore, social interactions were strategic, and I learned to intuit other people’s needs and strive to meet them. Obviously, this is in no way sustainable, completely emotionally repressive, and no doubt manipulative. Though that’s what conformity asks of you, because showing up as anything else becomes a threat. Authenticity has no place in spaces you’re asked to assimilate. Those who exist as a threat to a white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist society understand that for these systems to exist society must be extremely well conditioned to uphold them. That means that we grow accustomed to reacting to life from fear, rather than responding to life from love. Rationality goes out the window, it’s forgotten. It’s your duty to remember.

As I reflect back on that day in sixth grade, I have empathy for the child who understood the assignment of striving towards a particularly limited success shaped by eroding and oppressive systems. In hindsight, what once felt fractured is one of many irregular pieces that complete the mosaic of my life. Each piece holds its own purpose and beauty in the broader pattern. In life you’ll conform to an environment for a variety of internal and external factors—it affects us, and we affect it. I’ve taken what resonates and left the rest, aware of the possibilities of being swallowed whole by over-identifying with the many roles life demands of us Black women. To the only Black girl in the room, it may feel lonely, but you’re not alone. Your presence is a Divine Disruption. Your existence in these spaces is an accomplishment to be proud of. Your voice, though you may still be finding it, belongs to you—honor that. It won’t always be easy, but you’ll find your way. May the snippets and snapshots of those willing to tell their story inspire you to do the same; you just might be the missing piece to their mosaic.