From academic and extracurricular settings at Penn alone, to politics and media in the larger society, the silencing of black women and subsequent labeling of them as “angry” or incompetent when they do speak unfortunately remains very real today. But these aren't just one–off incidents, and this isn’t just happening in hospital rooms. All minorities, but black women in particular, are too often discounted and marginalized for their voice on issues directly affecting them.įrom Serena Williams to the late Kim Porter, the phenomenon of medical professionals disregarding black women’s pain is just one of the most recent serious examples of this. Stereotypes like the angry black woman prevent me from ever speaking about these issues regularly, or on platforms such as this one. While I’m very much okay with every identity of myself today, constantly being reminded and hyperaware of each of these individual and intersectional stereotypes-and actively combating them daily-is tiring and at times overwhelming. From homophobia within the black community to white feminism, it’s easy to feel like no one understands you fully. Not to mention, it was hard to find a community that accepted me for everything I am. In a predominantly white and heteronormative country, where men continue to dominate top positions of corporate and political power, growing up with little representation and no public figure to look up to who looks exactly like you and relates exactly to you isn’t easy.Īccepting myself was difficult growing up. In a given day, if I’m not stereotyped when shopping, driving, or simply breathing because of my race, it’s my intelligence and work ethic being insulted because of my sex, or my mere mental state questioned because of my sexuality.Īs if these feelings of constantly being stereotyped and internally pressured to uphold some sort of model minority image for each of my identities alone aren’t enough, they are only intensified when you consider that they intersect in the same person-like me. But upon reflection, it was the word I had been looking for to describe most of my life.īeing black, gay, and female, not a single day goes by that I’m not acutely aware of how I am perceived for any one of my identities, and that I don’t actively consider how every decision I make reflects upon them. Growing up in a homogeneous, traditional suburb of Georgia, intersectionality was a concept I didn’t hear about often, let alone understood fully until coming to Penn.