I made my first white friend in sixth grade. I’d left my all-black neighborhood (the result of intensive residential segregation) to attend a majority-white middle school in midtown Atlanta, about 30 minutes away from my neighborhood and its underperforming schools. At 11 years old, the racial dynamics of my new school meant very little to me. I was just excited to make new friends, which turned out to be much easier than I expected, especially since most of these kids had been going to school together since pre-K. The fact that some of my new friends were white felt insignificant.
That is until it wasn’t.
I recall that moment happening some time at the end of sixth grade when I invited Nicole*, one of my closest white friends, to come hang out at my house. Having had all of our previous sleepovers at her house, I wanted to have her over for a change. We picked a day and time, and I thought we were all set. Then I got a call from Nicole, suddenly telling me that she couldn’t come over anymore because she and her mom had something else to do that day. I was disappointed, but my mother was irritated. When I asked why, she pointed out that Nicole’s mom always found a reason why she couldn’t come over. Each excuse, my mother explained, was an attempt to cover up the fact that Nicole’s mother did not want her daughter at our house or in our neighborhood.
I stopped going to Nicole’s house after that.
Though we remained friends, this experience taught me the consequences of blackness and the tax one has to endure for white friendship. Throughout high school and college, this tax presented itself in a variety of ways. During college application season, the tax required that I swallow insults from a “friend” asserting that the only reason I got into Harvard was because I’m black. I found myself constantly enduring comments like, “Oh, I heard her say she was going to Harvard. I just thought she misspoke.” It would be impossible to count how many times people assumed I said or meant Howard University and tried to correct me.
Similarly, I felt the weight of the tax when one of my white friends started to fidget in his seat and make comments about how unsafe he felt as we stopped at a red light in the black neighborhood that bordered our high school. The neighborhood was often the butt of some joke about hearing gunshots that were really fireworks, so his actions that night did not surprise me. But even with the undercurrent of humor, I still felt defensive. Did my white friends subconsciously find black people dangerous and was I simply an exception to that rule? Moments like these gave me pause. They made me wonder, despite all of the laughs and fun moments, how deep our friendships could truly be.
Interacting with my white peers also required enduring their absurd claims of discrimination, the same claims that drove some to blame my college acceptance on affirmative action. One time during an AP Literature and Composition class, I listened to a white girl come near to tears over the faux prejudice she faced at our majority-black high school. In reality, white students were disproportionately represented in both Advanced Placement classes and our Communications Magnet Program, and thus had unparalleled access to the school’s resources. Her defining moment of “racism,” the one that really tugged at her spirit, was when a black student referred to her as, “Aye, white girl.” That her parents, by virtue of their wealth and whiteness, could get her into any class she wanted and, with an army of like-minded white parents, could strong-arm the administration into making any and all changes that would benefit their children — was irrelevant. She felt that she was experiencing reverse racism and had had enough.
Although this was annoying, college took the consequences of my blackness to an entirely new level. At Harvard, I was now in a setting where my identity was starkly in the minority and where whiteness was unavoidable. In high school, I could find comfort in the other 70 percent of students who looked like me, but Harvard was a sea of white and I felt like the smallest fish. As I befriended my new white peers, the cost associated with this action was immediately clear.
I learned that they knew nothing about my music (“Who’s T.I.?”). Or my hair (“How does it grow out of your head like that?”). I was startled when, at the beginning of my sophomore year in college, one of my white friends stuck every single one of his unclean fingers directly into my fro. It just was “so cool” to him, he couldn’t help himself. Besides being incredibly pissed off, I remember thinking, “Why do I know everything about white people, but these people know nothing about me?” At least my white friends in high school, by virtue of being in the numerical minority, knew at least something about black people and our culture, making our friendships feel far more equitable and genuine.
Over time, I got tired and incredibly exhausted of this gap. Instead of always having to explain everything from my locs (and then afro) to my affinity for pre-mainstream Kendrick Lamar and guilty enjoyment of Love and Hip Hop Atlanta, I simply adapted. I realized that in order to relate to them on any level, I would have to talk to them about their music, movies and favorite celebrities, pretending to empathize when they complained about frizzy hair and pale skin. I found myself burying the parts of my identity that they didn’t understand and stopped bringing up anything with which they were unfamiliar. I kept the conversations centered around their interests and the things that made them excited. Being all of myself outside of Harvard’s small black community rarely felt possible.
And so I just wasn’t.
Slowly, however, I stopped caring. I stopped caring if the white people around me were comfortable or understood me. I stopped caring if there was an awkward silence when I used black Atlanta slang, or if they got quiet and confused when I complained about the rain ruining my twist out. Now, I simply stare back, feeling completely unpressured to provide any explanation if I don’t feel like it. Reading W.E.B Dubois, Claude Steele, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and all of the other literature presented to me in my African American Studies classes inspired me to strive to reject the double consciousness that governed my daily interactions with white people, even the ones whom I consider friends. Something, likely not one singular text, moment, or lesson, but instead the cumulation of it all, led me to feel free enough to be unashamedly myself — unashamedly black. Doing this alongside my black friends, going through the whole process of becoming free with them, made it that much easier.
As I enter my senior year, though not yet completely successful in rejecting the white gaze (there are still times when I feel self-conscious about how the white people in the room perceive me or wonder if I’m confirming the stereotypes they have about black women), I can feel how far I’ve come since freshman year.
But, most importantly, I know there’s no going back.
*not her real name
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