It is the cops I can't make eye contact with, the Ubers that abandon their pickup, driving on instead of stopping when they see me. And it was the bosses who told me that I was too "loud," the complaints that my hair was too "ethnic" for the office, and why, even though I was a valued employee, I was making so much less money than other white employees doing the same job. Then it was the clerks who would follow me around stores and the jobs that were hiring until I walked in the door and then they were not. When I was a young child it was the constant questions of why I was so dark while my mom was so white-was I adopted? Where did I come from? When I became older it was the clothes not cut for my shape and the snide comments about my hair and lips and the teen idols that would never ever find a girl like me beautiful. The realities of race have not always been welcome in my life, but they have always been there. My blackness is woven into how I dress each morning, what bars I feel comfortable going to, what music I enjoy, what neighborhoods I hang out in. I have never been able to escape the fact that I am a black woman in a white supremacist country. As a black Woman, race has always been a prominent part of my life.
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