My racial identity is Nigerian and Puerto Rican I am a black women and was able to understand my race at a very young age. Due to countless of unwanted lectures and difficult conversations. Through out my life I have had multiple racism encounters and taught to understand that things may be more difficult for me in life as a black women and how that means that sometimes we have to fight little harder to demand our respect. There was a situation at Michigan state that took place where I was double majoring and had to communicate with both of my teachers to find ways to make it to important events like theater rehearsals that happened the same time as my chemistry class and with this that teacher decided to explain to me how she knows I’m not from around here and my people are bad with timing but it’s not her issue and I’ll have to figure it out on my own. Then there was a time on the bus where a lady came up to me and asked me to give up my seat in an empty bus full of seats and I didn’t understand why until I understood what Rosa parks went through.
This where I decided to stand tall as a strong black women and understand that everyone is beautiful so is my melatonin skin. A lot of times I get judged for being light skin and the stereotypes that come with them there has even been times when officers have off angry personas toward me and handled situations unlawfully. Many people of color think my racial status is very unique and compliments me based off of it which makes me feel uncomfortable sometimes because I barely know any Spanish and was raised in Detroit. Others view me weirdly calling me white girl or asks me to prove my black percentage as jokes.I feel like I get the benefits of my dancing and African culture that holds a level of standards and moral values. We have our own wedding tradition and music style that many outsiders won’t understand. But there is a level of hatred between our own color and outsiders that make me feel unwanted. There are black people killing black people and limiting each others love and there is a level of negativity that comes with us and reaches to the entire crowd.
