Name: Column Writing

I knew something felt off

“Black people are just looking for a reason to get mad.” That one line is what keeps running
through my head over and over non stop. That one phrase changed how i saw everything,
made me second guess myself, literally kept me up at night thinking to myself… why?

It was Friday, the last day of the school week; I was ready for the weekend, counting down
the seconds before we could go. I was in journalism, my first period class, enjoying a
beautiful morning. I had never been that jolly in the morning; I even thought i was being a
little weird, but i was having a good day so I was going to take it.

As I left journalism I had a bad feeling about my next class. I was scared for a discussion the
class was going to have over racism. I wasn't scared about what anyone else would say, i was
scared about what i would say because i tend to get a little shy. I walked into my English
classroom slowly, as if I knew something was going to happen.

I took a seat and looked around to make sure everything was normal. It seemed normal.. I
think. The same group of boys were standing by the door making their immature jokes, the
kid next to me was reading the same book he reads everyday, my friend walked by my class
and waved like she usually does. Everything seemed normal, but I had this feeling in my
stomach that someone was going to do something, anything.

The bell ring and the teacher yelled for us to get in our seats,
“Okay class let’s start this discussion.”
The day before we read an article about how a black man felt his skin color wasn't being
shown on TV enough. I agreed with this man as a person of color. I don't feel like I'm being
represented enough on camera, and specifically what we were talking about were children's
films.

I raised my hand when I felt like I was ready to speak.

“I grew up only seeing white princesses on screens, the beautiful white princess that a prince
would do anything for. I rarely saw a person that looked like me on screen, and the one time I
saw a black princess she turned into a frog 20 minutes into the movie. I was literally a five
year old kid thinking wanting and praying to be white was normal.”

I thought the reaction to me saying that would be different from my classmates, but as more
people started talking I started to feel like my feelings and thoughts that I added too that
were not valid, and they were.
Name: Column Writing

The thing that really stuck with me is when someone said “black people are looking for a
reason to get mad,” was i looking for a reason to get mad?… was she targeting me when she
said that?… Was I overagerting?… no because i was underacting to the statement she said.