On my very first day on campus, I followed some people I had met on my floor to a party. We walked in a frenzy and waited in line and I laughed in excitement as we entered the room. I held my breath during all the hip hop songs — and there were a lot — because I was certain of what was coming once the rapper on the song slurred the deeply contentious ‘N-word.’ Of course, every non-Black person in the vicinity loudly and proudly recited the word in time with the beat.
I felt a deep shiver come over me.
My skin began heating up and I looked around, hoping someone nearby was as bewildered as I was. The room was warm and cramped and my blinding rage was becoming too stifling. Realizing that I could not fight everybody in the room, I left and on my way home, I began to unravel.
I thought, “What did you think was going to happen, especially in a room where you could count the number of Black people present on one hand?”
The sense of anger was very strange because it was not the first time that I had been present while the spirit of anti-Blackness overtook a group of non-Black people. It was not the first time.
After all, I had spent the past ten years of my life in spaces that lacked diversity. I went to predominantly white schools, swimming classes, dance classes, summer camps. My neighbourhood also included many white and Asian people, but no Black people.
What was four years in a school with not many people who looked like me?
But secretly, in the crevices of my heart, I had hoped that it would be different in this new academic environment. I hoped that the inept attitudes towards racism that I dealt with in high school would not surface here — a space filled with many of the most intelligent people in the country. The shiver terrorized my spine once again.
I thought about calling my mother but then thought better of it. My mother, ever the pragmatist, would have responded to the situation with a dry chuckle, asking if “That was it?”
She would most likely remind me that worse things could have been said and done. She would be correct and I would only become angrier. Both my parents had never shied away from the realities of racism and we spoke of it often enough that I had learned that growing thick skin was my greatest defence. They were always there to remind me that I could never get too emotional because whenever I did, that was when the damage would become catastrophic. Blackness in my childhood was always about being on my guard. It was about being careful in the way I spoke to authority, in the way I behaved on the bus, in the way I went shopping at the mall, in the way that I expressed myself — because I was often too much and too little at the same time. My parents were just being realistic. It was the only way they knew to prepare me for the world.
But I was aware that the cold shiver down my spine would not go away even after a stern talk with my mother.
As I finally returned to my dorm room, which was disappointingly the size of a shoebox, I went back to my bed and planned to resign in misery. I could hear a raucous group of boys speaking over each other loudly from my window, the excitement of the new school year palpable in their voices. I thought in annoyance: what was I even doing, sitting alone in my room?
I was supposed to be out there!
I was supposed to be having the quintessential university experience.
But, the cold shiver on my spine had become heavier. It had become so heavy that it felt like it was seeping into my bones. I needed to do something.
So, I called a very good friend who was on the other side of the country. She was a childhood friend and was part of my core group of Black friends in high school. A groggy voice responded and I quietly asked if she was able to speak with me. After some silence and a ruffle of unintelligible sounds, she agreed. The weight on my spine shifted as I spoke into my phone.
I regaled her with a common story that was very familiar to her. She scoffed in indignation at all the right places, sighed at all the right moments and clucked her tongue at the ridiculousness of it all. We reminisced about similar situations that had happened in the past. We pondered about what it was about Blackness that so many people felt ownership over it. I joked about how so many felt they possess an experience that they would never have.
She laughed and replied, “Black is cool. It always has been.”
I nodded in agreement and promised to call her back, feeling the weight on my spine shift some more.