Always just a negro

I knew I was black, I didn't know I was a negro.

I’ve always known I’m black, it didn’t bother me that much, being black. It was not something I had to negotiate with or explain to myself. It simply existed. My eyes were brown and caught the sun without effort. My hair was always larger than my head. My expresions are black, my lips are black, my nose is black. I’ve always known and I kinda liked it, being black.

However, I did not realize, at first, that other people were not seeing Black the way I was living it. To them my eyes would always be dark regardless of the light, that my hair would never be expressive but always inconvenient, that my laughter would register as noise rather than joy, that my experessions aren’t comprehensible because it’s negro things. For them, I don’t happen to just be black, but a negro.

A couple months ago, my hair was red. I had done long beautiful boho braids and I especially liked them because it was a new look for me, it added a little something to my face which I enjoyed much. It was not a neon red, but it was certainly red. In my course, many girls dye their hair. Blue, blonde, pastel colors that are read as creative, bold, individual. None of them were red. Yet when people needed to refer to me, when they gestured vaguely in my direction, it was never the girl with the red braids. It was always the Black girl. I mean beyond having red hair they could’ve described me any other way rather than just the black girl. At this moment, description collapses the instant race enters the sentence and individuality stops where Blackness begins.

I have always wanted serious things from life. I have always wanted to think loudly, to speak clearly, to matter. I am expressive, sometimes loud, often intense, not because I want attention but because I have something to say. I love politics. I love systems. I love power in the way one loves fire, still, in every academic space I enter, there is an unspoken shadow hovering above me, heavy and persistent, I didnt know what it was at first but i’ve come to realize it’s my skin.

When I grow tired of Eurocentric examples, when I want to write about something other than the West explaining itself to itself, the atmosphere changes, the room tightens as even the PhD professors were never intrested in negros, negro problems don’t really make sense to them you see. They’re maybe realities that feel like footnotes, best acknowledged politely and then abandoned. They wonder how a negro like me, raised in the negro continent was able to speak three languages by the age of three, how I somehow do not have that thick « african » accent they fantasize about in their films. Perhaps they saw me as an anomaly but its not really the case, they’d be shocked to know us negros perfected their dialects that were forced down our throats. They do not realize that we mastered their languages because power rarely makes itself understood in ours.

And when, despite all this, I believe I am finally being heard; when my arguments are sharper, when my reasoning is more precise, when my interventions are more effective, I am reminded of the line I cannot cross. I am told, gently, that there are things I cannot truly understand. When I speak, I am not granted the presumption of credibility, my arguments are met with surprise and my confidence with suspicion. If I speak on economics, on systems, on abstraction, there is an immediate hesitation, as if truth sounds different coming from my mouth. If I am right, it is impressive. If I disagree, it is emotional. If I insist, it is aggression.

After all, how could a negro mind comprehend such topics? This was never about intelligence, it is about authority, about who is allowed to be treated as a knower. Their ideas enter the room as neutral; mine enter as claims, their perspectives are theory; mine are experience, their politics is the world, the truth; mine is identity

They have never met me as a peer but more as evidence. Evidence that they are obivously open-minded, acepting, that this system can work because if not i would not be there ! Exhausting. I was never praised as somone who belonged but as someone who suprises, suprise though is not recognition it’s insulting almost, another way of keeping distance between the normal and the negro. They tolerate me, but tolerating has never meant respect. I can be given permission to speak but under their guidance, I cannot define the terms of the conversation. I am given permission to exist around them as long as my presence does not demand a redistribution of authority or any sort of questioning. Their acceptance has conditions: I can belong as long as I do not insist on being believed, as long as I do not complain.

They could’ve known me for a hundred things, talked to me for so many reasons but to them it wasn’t necessary, they had to be pushed to get to know a negro’s name, listen to the negro talk without interrupting, try to not make desert jokes in the middle of a conversation about what democracy means as if irony hadn’t reached it’s limits.

I knew I was black, I didnt know I was a negro.
Just a negro even with my mind full of ideas,
just a negro even when im trying to help,
especially a negro when I make jokes.

To them, it doesnt really matter if I got a seat at their table for now, their futures are secure. They know this moment costs them nothing. My opinions, on the other hand, have no place in rooms where they know they’ve got the power. Their eyes darken when I carry my audacity high, they fluster when I interrupt them, they’re uncomfortable but they’ll sneer after knowing they don’t have to waste time on this because I wont be able to do anything. I mean, I’m a negro.

Matter of fact, I should really be careful of what I say because I am the one which repercussions will fall upon so I will clarify this now: this text is of course a work of fiction and in no case what i think , every time i hear an out of pocket joke or am looked weirdly at, i swear im not tired of explaining every piece of my blackness, of being called the black friend, because i am black! i swear to you i will never complain again because i am so lucky to be in this position.

Of course im a negro who likes sports.
Of course im a negro who eats spicy things.
Of course im a negro who is loud.

I wonder when the shift happened, where my blackness went from being more than my skin and became a limitation, where every movement has to be explained, I wonder when I stopped being seen as a person and started being managed as a category.

I wonder when I went from being black to a negro.

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Thank you so much for getting this far, I had originally meant to apoligize for being too harsh but whoopty doo ! I hope you enjoyed if so you can always support my work and causes that are close to my heart!