From Kindergarten until the end of 5th grade, I went to a predominantly white school. In my grade, there were only 6 black girls (including myself) and 2 black boys. In the whole school there may have been 35-40 black kids out of about 500 students. I never had any racial issues while there; we knew we were black, they were white, we had different ways of talking and different likes/dislikes, but uncomfortable or derogatory differences were not experienced.
As the youngest child of 10 and with my older siblings being much, much older than me, by 6th grade I had no one who would be home with me when I got off of the bus. I ended up having to transfer to the predominantly black school where my mom taught. That is when the racism began.
The students ridiculed and bullied me relentlessly, mocking me for not being "black enough" and for "acting white." Not a day went by that I wasn't treated like crap, talked about, looked at crazy, and laughed at in some or the other. As a result, I created this pro-black, hard, pseudo-urban, rebellious identity by the eighth grade that carried into my late twenties. I mimicked the language of black rappers, popular black educators and actors, whoever I could, to be "black" and then I made sure white people knew I was "black," too. No matter what I did in middle school or high school, I was never black enough, never good enough to be really in, even though I eventually became popular, well liked, voted for almost everything--still, I never could make it all the way into blackness. Believe it or not, in high school I experienced racism from both my black peers and the white people in my community, and in college the cruel racism I experienced from white people further made me feel justified in the persona I had concocted.
It wasn't until the end of last year, after going through 4 years of spiritual counseling from my pastors and through tremendous amounts of self-awareness, I realized the identity I created is not really who I am. True, I am on a journey to find out ALL of who I am, but what I already know and the most important thing that I know is that I am a child of God.
The AIDS Epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa
I chose to focus on the disease stressor, more specifically the AIDS epidemic, in the sub-Saharan region of Africa, where Swaziland has the highest HIV percentage of any country in the world (AVERT, 2016). UNAIDS developed a way to prevent new infections of children called the Global Plan, and 2009 saw a 435 decrease of new infections in children (AVERT, 2016). Other ways the countries are trying to prevent and/or treat HIV/AIDS ARE: home based testing, condoms, counseling, prevention of mother-to-child transmission, voluntary medical male circumcision, antiretroviral treatment, and international support through funding (AVERT, 2016).
Reference
AVERT. (2016). HIV and Aids in sub-saharan africa regional overview. Retrieved from www.avert.org/professionals/hiv-around-world/sub-saharan-africa/overview
Hi Felicia,
ReplyDeleteChildren can be so cruel and I am sorry to hear that you had to endure that. Did you ever tell you mother what was going on? Racism still exist today in America and it is always a difficult subject for black and white people to address because no one wants to offend the other. Your story should be told so that it can reach other children who may be enduring the same thing. AIDS is very serious not just in Sub-Saharan Africa but in this country also. But to hear that Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the larger country where AIDS is destroying lives is terrible. I believe that all nations need to come together to fight against this disease.