Continued from front page dating world because of the color of her skin, Acquah was verbally abused from time to time in public places that should have been safe. “There was just a time in late 2012 or early 2013 when I got called the N-word four different times in public spaces. It was once on BYU campus, once on a public bus,” Acquah said. “Once in a JCPenney this little boy yelled it at me, and the mom got angry and upset at him for yelling at me, but she didn’t say anything about the fact that he used a really racist word, or the fact that he was cursing. He was literally 5 or 6 years old.” Even Acquah’s two best friends who are also people of color had a hard time entirely relating to her unique experiences as a Black woman. Combined together, all of these terrifying events began to push Acquah to the breaking point and to make matters worse, she didn’t really feel like there was anywhere to go. “I had to stay because BYU is just a really affordable education that I just wouldn’t be able to study anywhere or get that quality of education for that low of a price, so I had to stay, but it was just really difficult,” Acquah said. Over time these events led Acquah to come to terms more with her blackness, which she had struggled with reconciling as a kid. In 2015, Acquah, who had previously relaxed and straightened her hair with chemicals, decided to cut it all off and grow out her natural hair. Allowing her intrinsic beauty to show was a catalyst for helping her realize how unique her experiences are. “When you have a huge ’fro that defies gravity and has tight curls, you have to care for it and spend a lot of time on it. That in itself actually helped solidify my black identity because you can’t hide when you have such noticeable hair,” she said. Systemic racism though, still remained an everyday reality that Acquah had to face. “At that point in time in my life I just didn’t have the language or the ability to articulate things the way that I can now and to address and accurately identify racism when it happened to me, so at that point in time I was just really shocked and didn’t know what to do.” “It wasn’t until a few years ago as an adult that I came to really understand what blackness was to me,” Acquah said. “A lot of things happened kind of consequentially. There was a lot of killings of honored Black men by police officers. There was Philando Castile in 2016 and as well as I believe in that same weekend Alton Sterling was killed. There was Eric Gardner and [the shooting of Michael Brown in] Ferguson, [Missouri].” The taking of Black life, as shocking as it was, caused Acquah to begin to wake up to just how bad things could get. Similarly, though, Acquah was inspired by public figures such as Colin Kaepernick of the NFL
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taking a moral stand by kneeling for the National Anthem. “There was just a lot of political and social movements going on at the time that I instantly identified with, but then I noticed that all of my white peers and fellow church members were very, very against for whatever reasons, but I realized that there was something very, very different in my perspective and line of thinking that a lot of my views people thought didn’t align with Mormonism,” Acquah said. “But then I started to realize that I’m Black, and I just view the world differently because these are things that I’ve witnessed, you know, and that my father has experienced and that my peers and friends and cousins experienced growing up. It was just very personal in a way that wasn’t for a lot of my peers.” Over time Acquah met Black friends in Utah who shared her experiences, joined accommodating religious groups within her faith and switched her minor to Africana Studies. Doing this helped to educate her and she came to realize that she wasn’t alone in her experiences. Acquah now describes her blackness using newfound language that she has developed over the last five years. “It’s so intimate to me and it’s so a part of my daily life,” Acquah said. “I would say that it’s just two sides of one coin where it literally is the pain, the oppression, the ways that I have to navigate life always being conscious of how I’m being perceived—specifically in Utah it’s usually white people, but just by the world in general. “And so my blackness shapes how I get dressed in the morning, it shapes how I style my hair, it shapes how I speak if I have to code switch during different social situations if I’m going to speak more articulately, or relax a little and speak more with a Southern or colloquial speech pattern,” Acquah said. “And so, it’s something that I’m always cognizant of and thinking of every day.” As part of her evolving self-awareness Acquah has also learned how to embrace her blackness by resonating with the experiences of her ancestors. “It’s also beauty. Historically speaking, I come from really powerful and influential people. My father is from Haiti. Haiti was the first and only island to revolt against their masters and create an independent and sovereign country. And with that there’s just beauty, and rebellion and resistance,” Acquah said. “On my mother’s side my grandparents
were Black people in the South and partici“Part of the founders of Utah were Black pated in the civil rights. I just come from a enslaved people. They helped to build the long heritage of resistance and people who state, they were a part of the pioneer generwere just able to make the best out of just re- ation; they weren’t allowed their freedom,” Reeve said. “Their freedom was not granted to them by people in Utah, but they were reliant upon the United States Congress.” To Reeve, these stories are illustrative of problematic issues that are at the core of Utah’s past. If they are approached the right way though, Breasha Acquah Reeve believes that they can actually be a teaching tool that instructs ally, really awful situations over and over and us how to overcome present racism. over again.” Although, understanding the issues does For Acquah this has helped her to cre- not change the reality of the past, it helps atively express herself in a system that has people come to terms with what happened so many times stacked against her. that future generations can heal and clearly In addition to listening to current stories recognize prejudice according to Reeve. of Black people’s experiences, historians in “Another lesson is what does racism Utah show us what it was like to be Black look like? How do we learn to overcome racin Utah in the past. Through sharing these ism? I think that history can be one way of stories, historians hope to correct the racial doing so. We understand what it looked like record that has often gone ignored. in the past and it has the potential to help us W. Paul Reeve, chair of Mormon Studies improve the future. I think that confronting in the History Department at The Universi- that is actually healthy,” Reeve said. ty of Utah, is working on a project that at“Knowing the names and understanding tempts to amend the whitewashed narrative their experiences is diversifying the Utah stothat people are taught about while learning ry. Black history is Utah history. Their stories Utah history. are our stories. Their stories represent Utah “It’s a digital database wherein we are history,” Reeve said. attempting to name and identify every person Overall, even though it has been a long baptized into the LDS faith between 1830 and time for Acquah to become fully comfortable 1930. It’s centered around bios, but if you go with her identity and talk about it, she feels to the site there’s also a map that also points that everyone can benefit from understanding to the location of baptism,” Reeve said. “One where Black people are coming from when of the things that I didn’t anticipate when I they share their stories and talk about race. started the project is the number in Utah.” “When you can come at something from Reeve created the database with one a multitude of different perspectives and of his intentions being to show people what background it gives you a clearer understandwe can learn from the margins. He tells the ing of what exactly is happening. I think that stories of Black Latter-day Saints from the a lot of people get uncomfortable when I, as ground level instead of the perspective of a Black person, talk about decentering whitetheir leaders in order to bring humanity and ness or decentering white people. I think that dignity to people lost to the annals of time. white people get defensive about it, but when “What I hope people learn is that there you learn from other people there’s always were Black Latter-day Saints from 1830 all going to be something that you never thought the way to the present. They’ve always been of before. There’s always going to be some there, but they’ve been erased from collective observation that’s important to them that you Latter-day Saint memory and also typically never really noticed or thought of,” Acquah not included in Utah history.” said. Some of the biographies talk about the “I think that when white people listen racism that these early Black Utahns encoun- to stories and hear from Black people everytered at church, the 1852 servant code that body is better off, because on white people’s legalized slavery in Utah, and racial passage side they get more understanding and more that allowed socially accepted Black people enlightenment and views of certain situations to receive Latter-day Saint religious rituals that maybe they wouldn’t have got if they and be accepted as white. hadn’t heard it.” l
But then I started to realize that I’m Black, and I just view the world differently because these are things that I’ve witnessed, you know, and that my father has experienced and that my peers and friends and cousins experienced growing up. It was just very personal in a way that wasn’t for a lot of my peers.”
Sugar House City Journal
