a tale of racial imposter syndrome

In the Salt Lake City suburb where I grew up, surrounded by whiteness and conservative values, when my “friends” called me an Oreo, I thought this was a good thing. They were saying I was like them, right? White on the inside?
 
Still, I longed for hair that would brush, a figure that was a little less shapely, and a crush who liked me back.  Just wait till college, I thought. I wouldn’t be the only Black person there. In college, I would make friends who looked like me, (finally) have a boyfriend, and a body that’s less “different.” I would fit.
 
Long story short: not so much.  
 
I had hoped to go to school in a big city. Seattle was high on my list. But when I received a scholarship to attend a small state school, staying put simply made the most sense.
 
My first order of business was joining the Black Student Union. Even though the student body was roughly 12,000 incoming freshmen, we were a small collective of roughly 10 people. I was the only one who grew up in Utah (everyone else was from Las Vegas or somewhere in California) and one of two women.
 
My fellow members eagerly asked if I could cook them greens. Nope. What about braid their hair? Nope, again.
 
I was ashamed by these responses. Why hadn’t I learned?
 
Truth-be-told, I was feeling a bit shy. Aside from my family, I’d never been around many Black people. The bantering was unfamiliar. I didn’t know what we were talking about until the other woman in the group stood up in my defense. “Why are we making fun of our own people? That’s not cool.”
 
Ohh … we were talking about me – my clothes, my speech, my seeming aloofness.  Why was I acting so white? Subtext: Who let this Oreo in? 
 
Not belonging within the group I identified with was more painful to me than navigating the microaggressions hurled my way in white spaces. I never went back to the Black Student Union.
 
I used to look back at this experience with embarrassment. Why had I let them cut me down right in front me? I was ashamed that some of these men, who were so popular on campus, considered me a racial imposter. I believed they were right.
 
Today, I look at this experience a bit differently.
 
For my younger self, so uncertain of her Blackness, I feel compassion for my inability to stand up. I see why, shaped by a deep longing to finally belong, I let these naive students define who I was.
 
For our humble collective, a true minority in a sea of white conservatives, I feel protective of what our club could have been – a space for rest, ease and real support. 
 
Rather than anger, I feel sad. The truth is, we were all just trying to survive.  
 
What erupted between us was a response to trauma.
 
For those unfamiliarly surrounded by so much whiteness, the BSU was the one place where rather than being routinely exceptionalized or feared they hoped they could finally just be themselves.
 
Finding ease meant finding community, but under pressure, that journey towards each other became truncated. Rather than taking the time to actually get to know one another, Blackness became a reaction to whiteness.  Fitting in meant adhering to behaviors Black people were “supposed to” embody. A Black girl is supposed to know how to cook greens. Supposed to know how to braid hair. Supposed to be able to banter and clown …
 
I didn’t fit the “supposed to be” model. None of us really did.
 
When stressed, the body exhibits familiar responses. We fight, we flight, we disassociate, we freeze. My BSU colleagues chose to challenge “the girl who seemed so aloof,” and I, ashamed by my seeming inadequacy, made myself as small as possible and then got out of there.   
 
Under pressure, we default to embodied patterns that have historically kept us safe. There was pressure in that room and it was the pressure of a people long diminished by systemic racism. We were experiencing the impacts of what it means to live in a society where one’s humanity is continually up valuation.   
 
After the pain of this exchange, I could have continued to avoid all-Black spaces. For a few years honestly, I did. And then, I realized the importance of doing the exact opposite.
 
The healing possible in BIPOC spaces is only possible when we are together. More than locations where we can be free of the white gaze, these spaces are opportunities to explore the deep trauma that lives in our bodies and has been passed down through the generations. This is the trauma of the house slave vs. the field slave, the brown paper bag test, and so on.
 
These ways of othering each other, seeded by white supremacy, keep the very systems that oppress us in place.
 
Paving the way towards a more liberated future requires that we not only brush up against these pain points but find ways to transmute them. We can only do this work together, and it begins by feeling for how systemic oppression shows up in our bodies. 
 
Yes, it’s scary. Yes, I still feel the fear of being “found out” every time I step into an all-Black space. But the more I engage in this kind of healing, the more I realize that it’s all my body really wants. 
 
Blackness is not a monolith. Nor, Chinese-ness, LatinX-ness, Queer-ness and so forth.  There is just a people doing the best they can to stay safe, to belong and to survive. 
 
Working with clients and facilitating spaces where we’re finally able to feel for these hurts (often buried deep under the surface) and address and mend what’s been challenged, I get to be a sacred witness as others reclaim more of who we all really are – brilliant, whole and undeniably interwoven with a rich ancestral inheritance.

Shining with you,
Kelsey