Life is hard sometimes. It can be painful. It can be unfair and cruel. It’s what you do with that pain, that cruelty, and that unfairness that really matters the most. My everyday life is full of these obstacles just because of who I am. I am Natalia, a young Black woman living in the city of Naperville, Illinois. It is a city of 148,300 people and the percentage of Black residents is a mere 5.2%. This means that in nearly every classroom, every church, every restaurant, even every grocery store that I enter, I am surrounded by others who don’t look like me. I am surrounded by people who might not even like me just because of the melanin within my skin.
Ever since I was a little girl, I always knew something was different. I was conscious that I stood out even before I had the words to describe why. Being a young Black woman in Naperville is my challenge that I face every day—and I wouldn’t change it. Growing up the daughter of a Black father and White mother, I’ve been able to see both sides of the awful injustice that happens in our world. Despite this, my parents always tried their best to surround me with different types of people and cultures. Others looking different from me was nothing out of the ordinary. This was not the case for my first-grade peers. First grade was the year I learned the word “race”. I didn’t learn that race was simply a way to classify people based on ancestry; I learned that my race was something that people sometimes didn’t accept. I learned that because of my race, my life was not going to be the same as my peers. In my first-grade class there were kids that wouldn’t play with me, kids who told me they wouldn’t be my friend because of my “brown skin”. These types of incidents occurred consistently and they didn’t stop after elementary school.
In junior high, there were boys that told me they didn’t like me or wouldn’t date me because of my race. I had friends that said I couldn’t come over to their homes because of the color of my skin. Waking up each day knowing I was different from the people around me made my self-confidence plummet. I started to realize that my White peers didn’t have the same fears that I lived with. They weren’t afraid that someone wouldn’t like them because of their skin color. They didn’t fear that something terrible might happen to them if they were stopped by the police. My White peers didn’t have to worry about not looking suspicious when they went shopping or not playing certain music too loudly in the car. On top of this, I was often told that I was “white washed” and that “I don’t act Black” because I didn’t fit a stereotype that some of my classmates had for Black people. These were difficult years. It was also at this time that I learned the words that people throw at you don’t make you who you are.
The worst bullying came during those junior high years. By that point, kids knew what racism was. They knew what they were doing when making fun of me, yet that didn’t stop them. I had my first Black teacher in seventh grade and every day I would hear my peers say that I only got good grades in her class because I was Black and that she was only kind to me because I was Black. Because of these kids, her class became something I dreaded attending. I started to think “if only I weren’t Black, things would be different”. Seeing my teacher of color have so much confidence and so much kindness in her heart even though students, and even teachers, said things about her did give me a little hope. It gave my seventh-grade self a glimmer that maybe one day I could find myself within all of this bullying and make a positive impact on someone else just as this teacher had ultimately done for me.
Within the past year, the Black Lives Matter movement has become a powerful national movement, something I’ve never seen before. In the movement, I saw my chance. My chance to pick my head up and do something about the hatred going on around me. I peacefully protested, I marched to the mayor’s office, and I told my story to the city of Naperville. I’ve educated my friends and even some of my family. I received so much positivity. At the same time, my brother’s friend got stabbed right here in Naperville because of his presence at the protests and kids at my school still call me racial slurs on a daily basis. My voice alone isn’t enough. However, because I have been granted the opportunity to share my story on this platform, I couldn’t pass up the chance to try to make a difference in a more significant way.
I’ve been given the chance to change this community and, in the short time that I’ve been speaking out, I’ve seen much growth. However, that doesn’t mean it’s all better or ends here. It won’t end until I can walk into every classroom, every church, every restaurant, even every grocery store and feel like I belong. I’ve learned how to live with the challenge of being a young Black woman, and this challenge will never end. This struggle is something I choose to see as a privilege. It is a privilege to try and change generations of mistakes and hatred. It may be the hardest obstacle I’ll ever face but it’s part of what makes me uniquely me. I am a young Black woman and I’m proud of it. This entire movement of BLM is exactly what Martin Luther King, Jr. wanted. Brothers and sisters of all different colors coming together to make a change.
My hope is that as people hear my story, maybe some of them will open their minds about how they see the people around them and that we will begin to see real change happening. We are one step closer.
