I didn’t know that I was Black until the fifth grade. I mean, I always knew that I was Black as in the Black slash African American box I poorly shaded in every year on the CST and free lunch applications; but, I didn’t know know that I was Black. It was during a passing period I had between Physical Education and Science to pee that I realized what my race was. Like hundreds of times before, I entered the dimply sunlit restroom connected to the cafeteria of my elementary school; but, this time, instead of exiting the restroom, after washing my hands, I decided to look at my reflection. And, in that restroom’s small, scratched up mirror, I, for the first time, saw myself — or, at least, I finally saw race. Initially, I didn’t connect my reflection to my body. I remember searching for myself in that mirror, literally looking amongst the faces meticulously transferring bobby pins from lips to hair, and sealing unraveling braids with ligas for me. Now, I think because 1. everyone I knew had fair, pale skin and thereby 2. I had an environmentally based conjecture of myself in my mind, I tried to deny that the dark girl standing towards the back of that restroom was myself. Challenging this, I recall raising & lowering my eyebrows, twisting & bending my …show more content…
And, in the second half of my secondary education, my search terms became more specific. Emo, Scene, and Alternative culture was popular at the time so I applied their respective WikiHow articles to how I dressed (black was key and bangs were in), communicated (poetry was my medium, silence was romanticized), and thought (life was supposed to suck) at the time. In addition, since I finally had Black peers in my classes in the seventh and eighth grade, I sought ‘how to be smart’ — still striving to be nothing like what “mainstream” Black culture looked like in 2009 and