. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t breathe, and I felt myself further stifled and suffocated by my academic environment and my inability to be my full self when present there. I had come to my breaking point: I knew that my Blackness is my lifeline and that if I didn’t allow every part of me to enter the classroom, I wouldn’t be able to survive.
I was thankful for that space, but I shouldn’t have been the one who needed to start the conversation.The author and her family visiting her great-grandmother at her nursing home last summer. The author gave her great-grandmother a Harvard T-shirt before she started medical school. The first step to doing so is letting go of the false idea we live in a post-racial society. While it may benefit you to not see color, it only harms me. Iyou to see my color. Because along with my melanated skin comes the reality of my unique struggles, the resilient stories of my ancestors and the strength of my community.