S H E I S B L A C K
À mes parents que j’adore qui nous ont emmenée au Canada, qui m’ont enseigné le vrai sens de l’humilité, mes racine traditionnelle, supporté dans mes moments difficile et qui m’ont appris a aimé la couleur ma peau…
I Love You
There was a sinking feeling deep inside my stomach …. I couldn’t hear anything….
It has now been barely two weeks since my family immigrated to Canada from Ivory Coast. I stood in my history class excited, I have always loved history, and changing nations did not end that passion. History class was a bit awkward for me in my new high school in Gatineau Quebec.
Being the only BLACK girl in a class surrounded by white people learning about slavery wasn’t ideal. Nevertheless, I was over-excited on September 22, 2016, as we were going to be assigned a group project. This was a very important day as I decided that this was THE day, I would finally make friends and talk to others.
I thought to myself: omg I can’t wait to start; can the teacher speed his talk so we can jump into the project already??
The groups were assigned, and I finally sat with my groupmate barely containing my smile. The excitement overwhelmed me. 12-year-old me, in Canada, in Mont Blue high-school finally talking to people!
Omg I hope I don’t stumble on my words.
Little did she know, …. little did I know…
Little did I know that my joy and excitement would soon change melody.
One of my group mates raised his hand and to the whole class, he said to the teacher:
“Sir, can you please remove Keyrane from our group, she is BLACK and therefore not as smart as us, please sir, we don’t want to be slowed down by her and we don’t want to work with her”.
What???? Why? I don’t get it…. What does me being black have to do with how intelligent I am??
Those words hit like an arrow to the heart. It was like all the excitement I have built up to this day just sank deep in my stomach and it was painful. My heart was racing way too fast, my ear ringing, and my throat heavy. The shock was so intense that it felt as if my ears were muffled, drowning in a pool, the chaotic room suddenly felt silent to me.
As the other student watch and listened with no concern at all, I watched them talk but I couldn’t hear anything.
What is happening to me…
Why can’t I breathe?
Why can’t I hear them?
Breathe … breathe Keyrane breathe, surely the teacher would set this right.
To my disbelief, he didn’t!
The teacher simply removed me from the group making me work alone on a project designed for 5 people. My desk was away from the entire classroom in a corner.
The room felt so GIGANTIC.
Looking back, I wonder how or why I didn’t cry. I just sat there staring into the void completely disconnected of my surroundings and slightly shaking in my seat.
Words Have Power. Believe Me.
I felt shattered, I was shattered, after that bitter day, no matter how hard I worked at home, how well I prepared for a test, in the classroom, I could never produce good results as if a spell has been cast.
I felt inferior and indeed not as intelligent.
I FEEL DIZZY…. PLEASE MAKE IT STOP.
School has been rough, and I think my mom could sense it even though I never talked about it.
To make me feel better, mom managed to gather all the ingredients needed and cooked one of my favorite meals from our country, which I never thought I would eat in Canada, and packed it for my lunch.
During all my morning classes, all I could think about was lunch.
I thought eating the meal that I haven’t eaten for months now would make this day better. It would bring me some kind of comfort at school.
I typically hate lunch period because it meant, more bullying and intimidation from guys, an hour of wondering around and hiding somewhere away from people, or sometime crying in some corner by myself.
But today I looked forward to lunch with anticipation.
I warmed up my meal and finally sat down. Surprisingly enough, it was my first time eating in the school cafeteria.
I was still a bit nervous but this day I had comfort with me.
I start eating and before I know it, I am surrounded.
What is happening… who are these people…what are they looking at? What is going on?
There are student sitting on my table, other standing in front, beside and behind me, some standing on chairs.
I am in the center of a circular wall made of people and the more I looked around the dizzier I got.
Qu’est qu’elle mange ?
oh mon dieu.
C’est dégoutant?
C’est quoi ça ewww.
Ça me donne envie de vomit!
What is she eating?
oh my god, that so disgusting like what is this? ewww,
That make me want to throw up!
Comments on my food spilled from left to right, from front to back, with everyone talking and commenting at once.
I started sweating as my breathing increased, I closed my eyes and all I could hear was a bunch of white people insulting a type of food they never seen before.
I decided to close my container in an attempt to free myself, but someone pushed me down, and food spilled everywhere as they all laughed.
Some even SPAT on the floor, I felt dizzy and intense sadness took over. Surely, I did nothing to deserve this unnecessary treatment. Why can’t they just leave me alone for even 1 day. Tears poured down my face.
Please make it stop, someone, anyone, my throat feels heavy, my heart and breathing are out of control.
The commenting and laughter continue as I sat there covering my ear and closing my eyes.
Occasionally getting kicked by others for ignoring them.
“it’s just a period, soon lunch will end, just bare it …………….”
As you can imagine lunch ended and that was my first-and last-time stepping foot in the school cafeteria.
It was also my first and last time eating at school all together.
BOOM… is … is that blood?
Like … my blood???
Walking in the hallway at school was always threatening to me. Guys would purposely bump into me, making fun of every reaction I would have from their actions. They thought it was funny, but it wasn’t, and I hated it.
I failed to make them stop by simply asking, I also failed at pushing them back. It only encouraged and increased the bullies even more.
After weeks of physical bullies from the boys at school, I kind of got used to it.
It was noon, passed lunch time and I only had to survive the afternoon in this awful school.
I reached my locker and opened it, looking at my mirror, I gave myself my daily mid-day pep talk.
2 classes, 2 more, you can do it, just survive these last two and you can go home and forget about this day. Hang in there.
I have repeated to myself this same phrase without fails everyday ever since I started going to school. And yet there was blood… blood that seemed to be mine, why???
Oh right…., that’s right I remember now those guys standing by the wall there slammed my face to the mirror.
My glasses… where is my glasses?
In panic I looked down as the blood dripped from my forehead to the floor and my eye adjust from dizzy to focus and back to dizzy. There, I see my glasses broken, and the mirror is also shattered into pieces.
I collapsed on the floor as an intense fear suddenly overtake me, shaking uncontrollably looking at myself in the broken piece of the mirror, my eyes … they’re bleeding.
Tears start pouring down my face mixing with the blood. As I look up, the same group of guys staring with no remorse, bystander, and others walking by as what just happened doesn’t exist.
As a teacher heads over, the guys run away, the bystander continue their way and the teacher just tells me to clean this up so that no student step on glass and get hurt.
I looked at her in disbelief, doesn’t she see that I am hurt?
What about the blood?
But then again when do they ever acknowledge and consider me, Afterall I am an unsignificant black girl walking their ground.
I started picking up the piece of glass as she walked away. What would I tell mom?
Grandpa died of an eye injury right before we came to Canada, and everything related to the eyes triggers her.
I can’t do this to her. In the end, the day ended, I never told my parents what happened and when they asked me where my glasses are.
I simply replied I lost them.
I had a history of losing my glasses a lot in Ivory Coast, so they just took my words for it.
It has now been seven years since I experienced those events.
Looking back, I ended up failing all my courses because I never managed to mentally recover. I did however pass three courses – Arts, Science, and Gym mainly because the teachers in those subjects treated me like a human being, not just an Inferior Black Girl.
After that school year, I was never able to fully regain the confidence I once had before coming to Canada!
My family ended up moving to Ontario, and I was prepared to continue living a difficult life, and not talking to anyone but to my surprise, life in Ontario turned out to be different, perhaps because the province is much more diverse.
Teachers here were encouraging and mostly fair to me.
I quickly learned English and graduated from elementary school with honours, which was a major boost to regaining my sense of self-worth. I maintained that throughout high school :)
I grew mentally stronger than I ever was, because of what I went through in Quebec.
Today I feel unfazed by similar events when I face them. Nevertheless, horrific experiences such as what I went through still leave psychological scars.
I ended up developing a fear of talking to people, especially guys. Interacting with them would always leave me shaky and more reserved than I needed to be.
Over the years though, I learned to cope with that eventually.
Today, some even refer to me as a social butterfly and confident.
I don’t believe I am a fully confident person yet, but I am definitely still on the journey to fully become one.
I couldn’t be any prouder of how I overcame that episode of my life.
I also learned to love my skin color and identity, developing a strong sense of pride in who I am and my heritage.
