Try THIS In A Small White Town
Do you think you’re tough? Let’s see you do this
I was a lot of things in the small, white sundown town in which I was raised, none of which anyone else would dare to be.
I was a Black girl in a small white town. I’ve had white people stare at me as if I was an exotic creature to either treat as a pet or hunt down and kill. During my K-12 years, white teachers would harshly punish me for the same mistakes my white counterparts made. My eighth-grade teacher told me I would be a “welfare queen.” I was seen as a “jezebel,” with white women accusing me of “stealing their man” when I was 8 years old. White men began to catcall me by the age of ten. White men in trucks chased me down, screaming the n-word at me. Townspeople groomed me to be subservient — quiet, thankful, and to enjoy the abuse they inflicted upon me and would never inflict upon “their kind.”
“Black girl” is all they saw on the surface. If they dug any deeper, I would probably be killed.
I was a Black queer girl in a small white town. A very lonely existence. I was lucky in a way because I was never threatened with hell and damnation — my mom didn’t go to church. But because I was a Black girl, I barely had the chance to explore who I was. I was too busy fending off grown white men. I was too busy facing the fact I was…
