Something the Admission Officers should Know about me

At times I wish the world would be color blind, not in the sense that would take the color of the world away but in the manner that the color of the skin will not be a color anymore. Growing up in my early years, the city of New York was a colorful home. The town did not judge me based on how I look instead by the affection that it had on my young soul. For a part of my life, my skin tone did not matter” nobody cared how long my hair was or how dark my face looked like.

At my tender age math and science were fascinating factors created by the world little did I know that the world had its perception of people like me.

When I relocated to my current residence Charlotte, a rural town on the outskirts of North Carolina, I got to meet people who felt different than me. A little brown girl was no longer a beautiful small girl she could be beautiful, if only she had blonde hair, blue eyes and pale skin to show her eyeliner. This town was different the people from this city had a separate pot of cultures that I did not understand at first until I joined Sandy Ridgeway Elementary.

I can vividly remember my first day at school I can remember the pale faces staring like I was an alien from Mars. I can remember the blank stares and the whispers that ran when I passed through the hallway. It did not quite hit me the difference between the other kids and me, I mean after all I have seen people who are lighter than me, but we are still human.

When I proceeded to middle school life become more explicit, I was only deemed beautiful for a dark girl. Girls from my school would just be lovely if they had a fair skin and long blonde hair. At that point of life, I got to understand the sad truth, the truth that people are not just people they are what their skins makes them be.

I wondered why I could be singled out as dark and other girls who were beautiful had a different skin tone than mine. My insecurities of having a dark skin would extend to the type of close acquaintances that were friends but never on a personal level. I expected life in high school would be different, only to realize that my life was just better if I made it.

My long hours choking at the sun as a member of the color guard would only be beneficial if I turned a blind eye to the harsh comments coming from all over. I worked hard on my math and science just to make it matter, regardless of my efforts in several achievements at different honor society including the National Honor Society. I could still hear people asking ???is your hair real, because most people your color does not have nice hair.

Unusually I did not understand why there was your people in most sentences, I did not agree to why people are either black or white, yet we have the same characteristics.

The horrific page would soon pass on my visit to the well young Womens Leadership Academy at Princeton University. The two-week program on empowering young women of color would teach me that the world is white and black. It would explain to me the young dark brown girl can live beyond any limit.

She is liable to become a pediatric surgeon is she puts her head in it, she has a chance to end the inequalities of access to quality public health care in inner-city communities. She has a goal to have a better way for younger dark girls that will travel her way.

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