“You’re pretty for a Black girl.”
My first-grade brain couldn’t comprehend the weight and confusion I felt from this comment. I just knew something in me shifted as my ears took in these words.
Was it a compliment? Was it an insult? They praised me for my beauty but also suggested that beauty and blackness couldn’t coexist.
I was reminded of this incident when I returned to school from spring break this semester with my natural hair straightened, and a classmate asked, “Is that all your real hair? Is it actually that long?” Microaggressions like this have followed me throughout my entire life, constantly challenging the beauty of my blackness.
Being called “pretty for a Black girl” marked the beginning of my long journey toward self-acceptance and my sense of identity as a Black woman.
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From preschool through high school, I went to a predominantly white private school. By predominantly white, I mean almost all white. I was the only Black person in my graduating class. Over those 12 years, I heard my share of microaggressions.
Whether it was insensitive questions and comments about my culture, or microaggressions toward my appearance or offensive remarks about my political stance, I constantly felt that to fit in I would have to leave a part of myself behind.
Ever since that comment in elementary school, then all through middle and high school, I questioned my natural curls and curves, as well as my facial features. Because of the environment around me, I began to internalize the idea that blackness is an obstacle to beauty. Though I tried to actively reject this idea, I sought validation from the very people who excluded me.
Often, I felt out of place, but I clung tightly to my blackness by deeply immersing myself in Black culture and history. Because the only history I learned in school about my people was centered on over 200 years of enslavement, I felt it was my responsibility to uncover the rest.
I was always radical and activistic in thought and concept, but it wasn’t until I graduated from high school that I became radical in self-acceptance.
Overt racism is easy to identify, but microaggressions often get swept under the rug. Yet, these microaggressions are rooted in racism and can deeply harm one’s sense of self-worth, as it did mine.
I didn’t realize that I internalized the idea that my blackness had to be watered down for me to be accepted.
It wasn’t until later in my life that I realized how much microaggressions had affected my sense of self. The truth was, there was nothing wrong with my image. I just needed to escape the environment that made me believe everything was wrong with it.
As I entered college, my perspective began to shift. Not only was I surrounded by more people who looked like me, but I was surrounded by different worldviews. I was no longer the exception, and because of that, my confidence in my Black beauty and identity became exceptional.
I was and am not alone in the journey to self-acceptance. Many Black men and women share this struggle and slow, sometimes painful process without knowing or having words for it.
I also had no words for it until I took my first African American studies course.
Psychologist William Cross identified this process as “Nigrescence,” which explores the stages many Black people encounter as they become fully confident in their Black identity. Without knowing it, I was in this process throughout different stages of my life.
During most of my primary and secondary school years, I was in what Cross calls the pre-encounter phase, where blackness is watered down, and whiteness is looked at as the standard.
Then came my encounter phase, a gradual awakening to how my environment affected my self-worth.
My immersion-emersion stage began in college, surrounded by Black students, Black professors and unbridled Black history. I dove deeper into the culture and history I’ve always known and loved, but this time with a sense of belonging.
Now, I live in what Cross calls the internalization-commitment stage. Gone are the days when I felt the need to present a diluted version of myself to those who don’t look like me. My blackness is woven into every part of me, and I carry it with great pride. It’s in my hair, my voice, my activism, my worship and my joy.
Cross calls it internalization, but to me, it feels like freedom.
So, did my beauty change? Did I undergo a college “glow up?” Or, had the lens through which I was viewed and viewed myself changed? There is a clear answer.
The lens through which I used to view myself shifted vastly.
I realized that not only is my blackness something to appreciate, but it’s something to admire even when it doesn’t fit into other races’ ideas of beauty.
Most importantly, I realized that I was made in the “imago Dei” — in the image of God, my Creator and that gave my soul great joy.
Once I looked and saw myself through God’s eyes, I’ve never looked away.
When you’re made in the image of the Most Beautiful, how could you see your image as anything less than that?
Prayse is a junior in Media.
