Kristen Baylor.
I grew up going to predominately white schools, from headstart all the way up to my senior year of highschool, and then in college. I remember going to VBS and GA camps during the summer and being the only black girl there most of the time. I would always hear “Wow we’re the same color when I have a tan” or “I’m just as dark as you in the summer”. Another one I heard a lot was about my hair back when I was getting relaxers. I would always get told “Your hair is so long and pretty are you sure you aren’t mixed with anything” “You could pass for a white girl”. Being as young as I was and not really surrounded around people who looked like me, naturally I wanted to fit in with the people that I actually was around. So at the time, I didn’t know how to feel about those comments, I looked at them as compliments. I will never forget, I was outside for recess one time when I was in the 1st grade, and I walked over to a group of girls on the playground because I wanted to play with them. One girl told me “Oh my mom told me I can’t play with people like you”, then her and the other two girls walked off to play somewhere else. I went home that day and cried so much to my mom because I didn’t understand why the girl would say something like that. Then, that same year around Christmas time, we played secret Santa and passed gifts around in a circle. You were to make sure you left with a different gift than you came with, and I came with a black athletic barbie doll that came with a bicycle and two extra outfits. Once it was over we all got to open our gifts, and you weren’t supposed to tell anyone which gift you brought. Well, there was a little girl who yelled out “Who brought this??” and me being excited about the toy, I proudly spoke up and said I did. The little girl then gave me my toy back and snatched the one I got and told me that she didn’t want that barbie doll because it was ugly. I remember going back home with the same gift my mom sent me to school with and her asking why was I coming back home with the same gift. I lied to her and told her that someone else had bought the same exact gift because I didn’t want her feelings to be hurt. Although those things did happen to me at such a tender age, I finally grew to realize that I’m not pretty for a black girl, I am a pretty black girl.
