I have struggled immensely with figuring out who I am, better yet how I fit in the world. My therapist told me that I am overly introspective. I take on everyones pain, try to fix it, and struggle to find a voice for myself. I wholeheartedly agree. I am a black woman who has found herself in a unique position. I've had the opportunity to experience various socio-economic classes in America. I grew up lower-middle class with friends who were either lower-middle class or in poverty themselves. College took me to the world of the upper-middle class and was an experience that changed my life.
I never realized how poor, how uncultured I was until I went to college. Yes my parents did create experiences for my brother and I that took us out of our neighborhood, but it wasn't until college that everything was placed into perspective. I was the exception not the rule. The fact that I ended up at a prestigious private university while many of my peers did not made me unique. This experience made going home difficult. Once your eyes become open to the bigger picture, it is hard to see and accept close-mindedness. NW Indiana, particularly EC is filled with people who have never travelled off their block, let alone city, state or country. By no means am I bashing or under-minding where I'm from. I love my home and know that experiences in my childhood undoubtedly shaped the woman I have become. However, one becomes aware of this and starts to understand the hopelessness and depression many people back home suffer from even if they don't realize it. If you're never allowed to see the world, then your world becomes small. You begin to live in a state of a deferred dream. I often pray and hope that whatever God has in store for me involves helping people realize that regardless of what you're situation may be, your dream never has to be deferred.
I thought when I graduated college that I had seen it all. That I was "cultured". I had successfully prevailed in an environment that was foreign to me without assimilating or losing my "blackness". Again I was fooled when I moved to Atlanta for grad school. Atlanta is black Hollywood. The young black elite (and ratchet) flourish here and that was something I had never seen. At the same time I was in an academic program at a high class prestigious private university where I was the token surrounded by foreigners of european and Asian decent. Their ideal of what American and what Black American is, was deeply tainted by the media. So I had no choice but to become a poster child. I often wonder do white americans ever feel the pressure of being a poster child or representative for their race. I've had so many people tell me I shouldn't feel that way but it's difficult when you're constantly conscious of your blackness. I love my blackness and think it is beautiful but I often feel the double vail that W.E.B DuBois writes about in Souls of Black Folk( if you haven't read this book I recommend it). I think my current experiences in grad school have started to make me upset w black folk. Why? Bc honestly the world is our oyster yet we often chose to blame others for our demise. Maybe I'm insensitive but in 2011 there are no excuses to not become successful. Yes I know the system is screwed up, but at some point we have to take a stand and take responsibility for the state of our community! I believe that the roll of the talented 10th( whether they exist or not is debatable) is to help the other 90% which we deem "blind". Everyone has become so self and money centered. What good is it to have wealth if your wealth or riches fail to help someone else? I'm starting to ramble so I think I'll end with this: I am a black woman trying to find herself in a chaotic world that before I am born has wrote me off BUT in the words of Zora Neale Hurston:
" I AM NOT tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not be long to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all but about it. Even in the helter skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seer that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more of less. No, I do not weep at the world!!I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife."
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