BLACK.

I am black. 

Yes, my skin is dark. Yes, I have big lips. Yes, I am an athlete. Yes, my hair is nappy. 

 I. Am. Black. 

While my experience can be summed up with a few stereotypes, like black women being loud and ratchet, and how I have a "ghetto" accent, and how poor I am. 

But I promise you, I am more than just a stereotype. 

Yes, my skin is dark. My family migrated here from the continent of Africa almost 20 years ago. I am a first-generation citizen, and the oldest of my family. My parents have assimilated into Western culture, while still upholding important aspects of our culture back home. I am lost in two different worlds: an African too uncultured to blend in with her people, and the nappy-headed, outspoken dark-skinned that the US seems to have a problem with. Never seen to be "black" enough by my peers whose families have lived here longer, and "too black" for the groups I have tried to assimilate to. I am a blend of two contrasting cultures, always drifting between them but never being fully accepted. 

Yes, I have big lips. Big luscious lips that took me years to appreciate. I used to wish to have the thin lips of my non-black friends, used to wish for my lips to not be the "best thing about my face," and wished I wouldn't be called names for something I couldn't change. Don't get me wrong, I have gone through a long, everlasting journey of loving myself, but I always used to think my lips were a weakness in terms of Eurocentric beauty. Then, the narrative changed, and I went from the African booty-scratcher with big, chapped lips, to the girl with the lips that everyone wanted. I still feel unwanted, even as other women praised the features I have hated for as long as I can remember. The same lips that white women praise, while they diminish every other part of me. 

 Yes, I am an athlete. Sure, I can play track, soccer, volleyball, and swim, but I am more than an athlete. I am the black person who has to run from the police, or look unsuspicious and non-threatening. The black person that has to prove a point that I am not like everyone else in whatever I do, sports or otherwise. The black person who isn't "black" enough because I play a sport other than football, or basketball. I play the sports I do because I want to, because I feel empowered to. 

Yes, my hair is nappy. My 4C hair fights against itself while I manipulate it to fit the style I want. The hair that is my form of self-expression, that defies gravity, that is so malleable, even through my different phases. The hair that was treated for so long to look my white friends, the hair that was permed to the point of it being damaged, the hair that was told by all around it that it was unprofessional and unkept. The hair that was unaccepted by the world. The hair that went through a transitioning phase when I cut all my permed hair out, and was ridiculed by my family. The hair that grew to be "different that I thought," the hair that I never appreciated or loved until recently. The hair that now, I rock with pride. Yes, it's short and yes, it's hard. The same hair that others try to touch, like it's its own creature, the same hair that is called undone. The hair that I now love and is now my form of self-expression. 

Yes, I am black. 

 I am an individual with her own different quirks, that refuses to be boxed into a simple, demeaning stereotype, never to be looked at again. I am my own being, one that can control how people perceive me. Me, as a person. 

I am black, and I am me.