7/10/2025 "Hey, Black Girl"

           

    Weekly I'm met with the question: what are you? My response being “I’m black” this is then followed by shock on their face where they list the things that they said I look like “Bro I would have thought you were Arab, Dominican, Italian, Hawaiian.” While I sit there smiling. To this day I am still unsure what to say to that other than let out an awkward chuckle.

    Growing up in the suburbs I never really looked at myself as different from the other kids. Even though there were very clear differences I never saw them or even paid attention to them. The biggest differences being my skin color and my hair. Those were the most noticeable characteristic traits when you looked at me. Being that I grew up in a majority white neighborhood all of my friends looked completely different from me. The majority were blonde or brown hair with blue or brown eyes. I never really thought it affected me growing up but looking back at it, it did. I straightened my hair a lot, constantly got relaxers, and even dressed in a way that fit my friends more than me. I felt like people were nicer to me when my hair was straight. It gave me a sense of belonging that I somewhat looked like my friends. I didn’t want to be white I just wanted to fit in.

    I’m mixed and my mom is white and happens to also have blonde hair with blue eyes. Growing up I saw her and just assumed I looked like her to which is why I was always so confused when people would stare at me and her when we were out and I had my natural hair out. I just assumed it was because they thought we looked like twins, but now I understand that those looks I still get to this day are just out of confusion.

    The way I spoke didn't help my case of being considered Black to others, either. Like I’ve said I'm from the suburbs and I was also raised by an all white family so I was never really surrounded by AAVE so the way I speak is considered white. This is solely based on the confusion for many that being black cannot possibly mean you speak “Standard English”. As girls in my middle school would tell me “You don’t speak black enough” or sometimes “Can you like talk hood and stop sounding so white.” When I walk in a room people look at me and immediately expect me to speak “Broken English” and are astonished when they realize I can speak “Standard English.”

    As stated in the story “Nobody Means More to Me than You and the Future Life of Willie Jordan” by June Jordan, Jordan states that “White standards control our official and popular judgments of verbal proficiency and correct, or incorrect language skills, including speech.” This creates the narrative that speaking white is the proper way to talk. In turn this creates a stigma around speaking black or African American Vernacular English (AAVE). It also forces the narrative that based on your skin tone one should speak a certain way, as expressed in my previous example. The idea that a young mixed girl growing up in the suburbs should speak black is harmful. It confuses children like me. I felt as though I was not good enough to fit in with the white girl because I didn't speak the way that is expected by black people. It led me to question where do I fit in?

    In the TEDTalk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie titled the “Danger of a Single Story”, she explains how when she first came to America for college at 19 her roommate was astonished by how well she spoke English. This was clearly an issue being that Nigeria’s national language is English, but because of her roommate's ignorance to researching this for herself she did not know that and just assumed that they spoke something else. Although I personally am not from a different country or have felt what Chimamanda felt to the severity I can truly relate to her. My friends strictly saw my color in these instances and truly could not grasp the idea that I could speak so well. They had learned to stereotype people of color whether that be from their parents or just all on their own. In both the TEDtalk and story that I previously referenced the idea of literacy being what you make it. Literacy is something everyone can make their own. I related to Adichie’s talk where she saw literature as a place of belonging and wished there were more books about people like her.

Work Cited 

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. “The Danger of a Single Story.” TED, www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story. Accessed 9 July 2025.    `1`

Jordan, June. “Nobody Mean More to Me than You and the Future Life of Willie Jordan- by June Jordan.Pdf.” Google Drive, Google, drive.google.com/file/d/1N3_tf0XOFSCNNnUp3kLApwdw-GiaGpYN/view. Accessed 9 July 2025.