Outnumbered.
Before I really get into the heart of this post, I have a question for you. What do you think of when you hear the word outnumbered? What words do you associate with it?
I honestly think of a soldier coming up to his commander in one of those war-action movies, saying, “Sir, we’re outnumbered. They are attacking on all sides; we need to retreat. Our men are dying!!!!” The screen would then pan to the highly respected commander of the troop, looking at the battlefield map on his little table in his large tent.
Maybe I should try writing low-budget movies with poor scripts instead blog posts?
Anyways, with this in mind, I used to associate “outnumbered” with “war”, “enemies”, and “losing”. However, in recent months, I realized I could just as easily see the word acting in my own life. No, I’m not at war with a supposed enemy. Yet, I do occasionally feel like I’m losing a bit of my sanity when I become aware of my surroundings and notice that I’m the only one who looks like me.
I went to a predominately white private school all my life, so when I chose to go to the University of Arkansas, I felt that I had nothing to be afraid of. My classes only ever had one or two black kids in them. Perhaps if I had have taken more standard classes, I would’ve had maybe three or four, with one of them being a football player that the school recruited in hopes of him being the next Michael Oher. To whoever reading, God, I hope you get that reference. I never even had one black teacher in my eleven years at the school. If there was a black adult in the building, it was a parent, the sweet janitor, or the substitute who was favored by all. I was basically a vet in being outnumbered at school. What would make the University of Arkansas any different?
Well, Fayetteville isn’t Memphis. When you can go a full day with seeing hundreds of white people for every one black person you see, it’s jarring. I came from a city with a 64% population of my own, to one with 7%. It’s jarring. Not to forget, it’s like some of the black kids up here were just raised different. I can try to give an acknowledging nod when I walk past someone, and they won’t even look at me??? Like what is that??? Even my white counterparts back home would give me those weak smiles. Where’s the solidarity here? There’s not that many of us here; we are outnumbered. It’s heartbreaking when it seems like even your own won’t give you time the day.
Needless to say, I don’t have many black friends in Fayetteville. Honestly, I can count on my finger how many black acquaintances I have here. It sucks.
“Why Taylor?”
Who can I talk to about things like…
The complicated process of finding a good, reasonably-priced braider? Or even finding a beauty supply store that sells braiding hair, specifically twenty-inch, pre-stretched, and ombred 27 to 613 braiding hair? maybe a suggestion of a new protective style I could try when knotless braids get boring?
My trials in struggling with accepting my own blackness, considering I did go to baby version of UARK before college? I can’t even begin to unpack that in this post.
Being asked by a higher-up of a program if I could join a group that mentors/tutors other students on how to code, when, if they had have asked me, I couldn’t tell them one Python command and how to use it? Did you even ask my professors about my assignments and projects? I’m not $#*% at coding. I’m nowhere near qualified, so why are you really asking?
The time when I was told by someone that their dad used to say the n-word “endearingly”? Or other “my family is racist” stories—that I didn’t ask for or want to know?
My experience or feelings with interracial dating?
My anger of being the only one in class, the reminders of the #BlackatUARK on Twitter, the name of the college that I am a part of that memorializes a racist, or hearing about someone writing the n-word, with the hard -er, in the dust of a window in the library that I go into all the time?
Most days it’s easy to accept that I don’t have a ton of people that I can talk to, who can relate to what I listed above. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I am silent about any of these issues. I’m not saying that I hate it here either—I love Fayetteville. I love the people here. I’m not hesitant to talk about any of these things with them. It’s just a lot of times, there’s a disconnect, that even the most detailed communication cannot make up for, and it gets lonely. I feel like I’m losing myself. It’s as if my thoughts and feelings are invalid, because no one I regularly talk to understands. It gets exhausting after several attempts to paint a picture more clearly. Some days, it’s just more evident that I’m outnumbered. Today was one of those days.
I’m sorry if this was heavy or sad, but I’m trying to be authentic with these, why not start off with a bang. Sort of.
Thank you for reading :)
