Arame Sene
FIQWS HA 10025
November 9th, 2019

“My community needs…” Essay

It is always hard to move from one country, continent, to the other. Moving from Africa,
Senegal to the United States was tough and painful for me because I felt like I was starting everything all over again. I only knew French and Wolof. I only interacted with black people like me and communication have never been an issue until I moved to the United States two years ago to continue my studies.
When I first got to the United States, I landed at a family member’s house in Harlem,
116th, which is also called little Senegal. I was very comfortable living there and having to see familiar faces. It felt like home. I sometimes used to pass by African- Americans, and since they are black like me, I considered them all Africans because of what I learned from slavery. One year after I started school, I was going through college application fill-ups. The question that stood up to me the most was when on the paper they asked for my race. The boxes that were available were black/African American. I was confused and did not know what box I belong to.
That is the moment I started to question myself about my race. I started to notice the division that society has built upon people and I was desperately trying to figure out what box fits me the most. I started to notice segregations that were made towards me, on the train, at school or at work. I started to feel a certain rejection from others because of my skin color and because of the backgrounds of people of color in the United States. According to the article (To See The “Me”
In “Thee”), “the key idea is that a “collective experience of the race” shapes a person’s experience and “makes a man accept what he cannot understand, and obey what he does not believe. His thoughts are only partly his own; they are also the thoughts of others.”( taken from
the to be is to be a white section). This means that based on the experiences I have faced, I can guess what race I am part of and/or society has put me on. One anecdote is when my friends and
I, one day, we’re on in train going home. We were talking and laughing when suddenly, an old white lady came to us and said that our voices were disturbing her. That we should be quit, she had a mean face. I did not know that just talking, existing could bother anyone. I felt restricted and I immediately asked myself: imagine living this for generations. It would be too much!
Indeed, according to the article, (To See The “Me” In “Thee”), “In fact, so aligned with whiteness is self-esteem that not to be Black is a state of blessedness. Precisely because in this country to be is to be white”. Since my race is black, that means in the U.S I will never “be”.
And because where you come from does not matter that much, people judge and treat you based
on your skin color, I know now the pain to be Black.
Another social identity that I wish to mention is the language barrier. I have always been a shy person. When I moved to New York, my shyness increased because of my broken English.
My little cousins used to always remind me that I don’t speak the English that they speak. I
started a complex from there, I refused the opportunity to speak, make mistakes, correct and better my language. It affected me a lot when it comes to participate in class, to communicate with friends or to even work properly at work. Additionally, a sequence from the
article “ Language skills and earnings” says: “ In fact, 2000 U.S showed that 47 million
U.S resident age of 5 and over spoke a language other than English at home and 21 million spoke
English less than “very well”. This study is accurate and I believe that not speaking English at home can affect the child’s ability to learn fast the language. On the other hand, it makes me somehow happy to know that I am not the only one suffering from the language barrier, that not speaking proper English does not mean being stupid. Fortunately, I have friends that are openminded and understand my fears. Knowing that I have a strong voice and that I am a smart young black girl, I wish to fight my fears of speaking English out loud and embrace my accent and imperfections.
In summary, being an immigrant colored person and still learning English can be rough.
However, I know that in life you have to do and to try in order to be. Now that I have found the community I belong to, I would love to see more awareness in youth struggling to communicate properly in English with the outside world and more acceptance among black people. Because at the end of the day, in America, we wind up checking in the same box and living on the same streets.

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