My Experiences As An African-American Are Inescapable

This summer, I had the opportunity to spend a month studying abroad in London. While there, the program I was with took us to Stratford-upon-Avon for three days to see Shakespearean plays. Throughout my time in London, my Black friends and I often got stares while we walked down the streets, and in the small town of Stratford-upon-Avon this behavior was amplified even more. I tried not to let it faze me, but it is hard to keep your cool when your simple existence is seen as a spectacle. My Blackness frequently feels under attack in America and an ocean away, I experienced similar feelings of discomfort. There was no hard R launched at me or any other overtly racist acts, but I still constantly felt as if I was being scrutinized.[su_pullquote align=”right”]I fell in love with theatre because of its capacity to transport me to other worlds and here I was on the way to a theatre, harshly reminded of the injustices of the world I live in.[/su_pullquote]

All of these feelings reached a boiling point on a Thursday afternoon while I walked to the theatre to see a production of As You Like It. It was a sunny, beautiful day; my friends and I spent the day exploring the town, taking the time to stop and look at flowers and streams, and I was excited to see the play. We were a block away from the theatre, and suddenly someone sprayed some strange liquid at us out of his car. An anger more intense than I had ever felt welled up inside of me, and I yelled at the car with more furor than I thought possible. Quite simply, I was enraged. The group walking with me consisted of me and three of my friends; three of us Black, and one Latinx. Immediately, I thought this incident happened because of our races. I had rarely seen any Black people in Stratford-upon-Avon, I had been stared at, and now I was being attacked for the apparent crime of being Black and alive. I fell in love with theatre because of its capacity to transport me to other worlds and here I was on the way to a theatre, harshly reminded of the injustices of the world I live in.

The car went on to spray the white couple walking further along the street which proved that it was not, in fact, a race crime, but this is not the point. The point of this story is that in that moment, I immediately felt that I was being targeted because of my race. It is a horrible experience to have something happen to you and to instantly think that you are being persecuted simply because of the color of your skin. [su_pullquote align=”right”]It is a horrible experience to have something happen to you and to instantly think that you are being persecuted simply because of the color of your skin.[/su_pullquote]The point of this story is that it was not just this incident, this town, or this country that made my Blackness feel under threat. The experience in Stratford was infuriating, but it also reminded me of the many instances during my life in the United States where I felt that my safety was threatened because of my race. It reminded me of the time last semester when my friend got ESTed and when the police showed up, I began to have a panic attack because I was worried that it was going to be my last night alive. It reminded me of the time I cried while watching When They See Us, because any of those boys could have easily been my little brother. It reminded me of numerous other instances where I felt unsafe as a Black woman in America, and perhaps this is why I was so outraged at the situation. In what was possibly a mischievous joke, I was forced to spend my time in another continent trying to cope with the many small traumas that came along with my Black existence in America.[su_pullquote]James Baldwin once said that “to be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time,” and maybe this rage follows you around the world; no matter where you are, you constantly receive reminders of the hardship and discrimination that comes with being Black in America.[/su_pullquote]

I knew that if I was white, I would not have had such a visceral reaction or had so many wounds reopened. I had such a heightened reaction to this situation exclusively because I am African-American. James Baldwin once said that “to be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time,” and maybe this rage follows you around the world; no matter where you are, you constantly receive reminders of the hardship and discrimination that comes with being Black in America. You are always reminded that the melanin you deem so beautiful is also the reason for so many offenses that you never truly recover from.

Jordan Coley ‘22 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at jordancoley@wustl.edu.