Ever since I arrived at Muhlenberg’s predominantly white campus freshman year, I’ve grappled with this internal conflict: how large or how small should I make my Blackness in relation to majority-white spaces? This complex reality of my Black identity is a reality that’s vastly larger than myself. It’s an experience that webs many Black people together. An experience that forces one to spend a lifetime trying to understand how to move, breathe, act, speak or even blink in overtly white spaces.
I remember freshman year when I would find myself in very white spaces, I would try to match the “white energy.” I did this by either dialing back my Brooklyn Blaccent (the dialect that I take so much pride in), laughing at their very unfunny jokes to not seem too much like the outlier, or simply by keeping my mouth shut (silence was often the best tactic in my opinion). In all white/heavily white spaces, I would take my Blackness, place it between my fingers and shrink an energetic force originally the size of the sun into the size of a pea. It was both an act of self-preservation (and simply trying to remain sane) and feeling as though to exist in that space, chunks of me needed to be removed and filled with whiteness and silence.
Something that I don’t think a lot of white people truly understand is the emotional burden of being the only Black person (or one of few) in an only white or heavily white space. It is exhausting and at this point, I’m going to need some money if this continues to be a problem. On a serious note, being the only Black person in a white space is a unique kind of trauma. It isn’t necessarily physical, sexual, mental, or emotional (you can definitely argue mental or emotional but that isn’t the case for me) trauma, but rather a trauma that cuts at your personality. It carves at it and if placed in that white environment for too long and for too extended of a time, it is so easy to no longer recognize who you are. Who your Blackness is. One of the most heinous aspects of white supremacy is that its goal in relation to Blackness is to starve it, demonize it and replace it. Being the only Black person in a white space acts the same way with enough time and enough exposure. It’s harmful to the Black spirit, the Black personality, and the Black mind.
Now, in my junior year, I find myself being a lot more comfortable with being the only Black person in the room. Not because it’s ok that I’m the only Black person in that space. That’s never ok. But I no longer feel the need to shrink my Blackness or the aspects of myself that relate to it in order to give more room to the already dominating white energy present. I have found confidence and a prideful sense of jubilee in standing out. No longer will I suffocate my Blackness to give more oxygen to whiteness.
However, acknowledge this: just because I can exist more freely in heavily/all-white spaces, doesn’t mean I want to nor that I should.
For all my Black people reading this, this is for you. Never take for granted the power of being surrounded by Blackness. Never take for granted how much it can feed you and revitalize you. Never take for granted the healing power of Black harmony, community, and Blackness itself.
