For me I’ve always kind of been aware of my race at least since I was about 5. I went to a catholic private school for a year and there weren’t many other black kids, but I wasn’t uncomfortable or made to feel different it was just something I noticed. It didn’t really become relevant to me until about the sixth grade or so it only had come up at that point due to the death of Treyvon Martin and prompted a very sad but necessary conversation from my mom. Her telling me ” I know you wouldn’t hurt anybody, but they are going to stereotype you”, she made me realize that I wasn’t just a little girl to them. That black kids we don’t get the same grace as other groups and that I will always have to make myself fit into these categories one way or another and that I would have to work 3x as hard to get half the recognition as others.
I don’t feel like there is much benefit to being black in the real world the list is more full of disadvantages, but I love the sense of community that black people can facilitate for one another even if they’re strangers, the support, the love, the motivation those are the benefits that I do enjoy. The ability to make jokes in the worst situations, to laugh to keep from crying, the rich history, it all makes me feel like I have to make it and I have to provide something that can help or advance my community. I suffer in ways that a white person may never think about I won’t do road trips too far across the country out of fear of getting stuck in a sundown town, of course I breathe a sigh of relief when I see a black cop as opposed to a white one, I don’t date as freely out of fear of what really might be said about me behind my back, I can’t express myself the way I may want to a lot of the time for fear of being the “angry black woman”, there’s a lot of black men who claim to just prefer or love white women (which is fine) but if you ask why they’ll just give you a list of things they don’t like about black women or being black entirely, I sometime find myself in certain courses or environments that I clearly have the right to be in (simply because I did the work) but see everyone else in attendance and then I get stuck with imposter syndrome.
I have to code switch which really isn’t a problem (it’s actually kind of funny now) but initially when I didn’t understand it, it kind of gave me an existential crisis. Went through the too black for the white kids but too white for the black kids for a little bit and as a kid it kind of broke my heart. Being asked “why do you talk white” when really my mother drilled in my head the importance of enunciation. It’s harder to say how I feel like I benefit because there are plenty but I’m not sure how to articulate them
