英语励志美文

●Heat surged through my body

●I was conditioned to think I was better than them.

●The only thing both my black and white classmates could agree on was that I’d always be ratchet, which meant I’d

never be worthy of their full respect.

●curse me out or grab me

● I no longer fear what people will think if I use black slang or brazenly discuss black issues, because I understand my

personality and tastes as my own

● Just because a black girl is loud and listens to Young Thug doesn’t mean she’s stupid or lacks emotional depth.

●We’re trying to fit into a society that doesn’t want to see us thrive, so we might as well say “fuck it!” be as loud as we

want, cry as hard and long as we need to, and dance however we like.

●

The Right to Be a Black Girl

When I was 13 years old, the most striking aspects of my appearance were a blue weave, thick eyeliner, and a wardrobe full of dark band T-shirts. My peers had conflicting ideas about me: I didn’t fit the image of how they thought a black girl was supposed to look and act. My white friends often reminded me that I was “above” most black kids because I spoke “proper” English, but they were quick to exclaim how ghetto I was whenever I raised my voice or expressed my opinion on a heavy topic. My black counterparts let me know that having colorful hair made me ratchet, because “only white girls can get away with that,” and felt I should’ve been listening to Lil Wayne instead of All Time Low. The only thing both my black and white classmates could agree on was that I’d always be ratchet, which meant I’d never be worthy of their full respect.

Because I listened t o alternative music, people tended to pit me up against “urban” black girls, who enjoyed rap music and spoke AAVE more than I did, as though I deserved more respect for being interested in things that aligned with white people.

My aunts and cousins had always advised me not to be like “those girls in the hip-hop videos;” I was supposed to be “classy.” They were enforcing a specific type of respectability politics: th e idea that if black girls “behave,” we won’t be set back by white supremacy and patriarchy. As long as I was “respectable,” I was better than more urban girls. By seventh grade, I had internalized those concepts and avoided hanging around black girls who exclusively listened to rap and weren’t afraid of enthusiastically expressing their opinions. I was conditioned to think I was better than them. You would never have caught me in

a tight dress or short bottoms because I was trying to distance myself from being volatile and hypersexual—aka, “that black girl.”

What I didn’t know back then: The intersections of racism and sexism, known as misogynoir, make it impossible for black girls

to appeal to the standards white supremacy has set for us, no matter how we dress or act. As well as disallowing me from choosing my own identity and tastes, this kind of bigotry put me in bodily danger. My sexuality has been joked about since I was in elementary sc hool, and at 19, I’ve noticed that as I get older, unwanted commentary on my body becomes more aggressive, and men often follow and threaten me if I don’t respond to their catcalls.

It wasn’t until I started paying attention to the way my white friends spo ke about street harassment that I realized what they went through was totally different than what I experienced. When they complained about being catcalled, some of them bragged about telling guys to “fuck off.” What happened to them is terrible, but it ma de me realize that the street harassment that I and other black girls experience is a lot more aggressive. Being considered a well-spoken, “alternative” black girl didn’t stop boys from telling me, “Black girls are good at sucking dick, cuz they got them DSLs,” meaning “dick-sucking lips.”

Street harassers, particularly black men who have internalized white oppression in a way that causes them to devalue black girls

in turn, think because I am a black girl, I should be grateful that any man is giving me attention, and they take it as an insult whenever I reject them. This is an obvious form of misogynoir, as I discovered through @feministajones’s hashtag #YouOKSis,

a thread where black women discuss their experiences with street harassment. Before I found that hashtag, I thought it was