Khristi Adams, Christian author of Parable of the Brown Girl, recalls being called names in school and struggling to fit in when the public schools she went to were under 5% black.
“The first time I was called the ‘n’ word on the playground, I was in second grade,” Adams says. “I was just playing, and I saw two boys and I just wanted to play, so I went over and this one boy was playing with me, and then the other one was like, ‘Don’t play with her. We don’t play with “n word.”‘ But when you’re a kid and you haven’t processed things or read books or had conversations, you are confused.”
Adams says she’s not the only one who has had this experience—or similar ones—as a little girl. In fact, in her book, she unpacks how black girls often feel unseen and unheard in society, including in the church.
“[These negative experiences] start to accumulate and build up over time,” she says. “And that translates into self-doubt, self-hatred, and then as you get older, you have to unlearn those things. You might go through a process of being angry. … They might be angry processing things for years that they heard—negative messages about themselves, about their hair, their skin complexion.”
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SOURCE: Charisma News, Kendra Semmen
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