How I Learned to Fight Back

I was seven years old when the world changed for me. One word. One moment. One truck full of boys who gave me my first lesson in hate.

Until then, racism felt like something that lived in dusty textbooks and old documentaries. Something far away from my life. But that afternoon, as I walked alone for the first time, a new kind of fear entered my body. A truck slowed beside me. Their voices rose. A single racial slur cut through the air and landed on my skin like fire.

Everything went silent.
Everyone stared.
I stood alone.

For the first time in my life, I understood what it meant to be the other. I was a child, but the weight of history pressed on my small shoulders. In that moment, I felt exposed and unprotected. I did not have the words for what happened, but my body remembered everything.

Growing up as the only Black child in a mostly white neighborhood meant that moment was not an isolated event. It was the beginning of many. The stares in classrooms. The comments disguised as jokes. The tension every time the topic of slavery surfaced in school. I carried it without knowing I was carrying trauma.

My parents tried to prepare me in their own gentle way. They reminded me that hateful words do not define me. They told me that people fear what they refuse to understand. Their love helped, but some wounds settle deep and stay quiet until something forces them awake.

For me, that awakening came in 2020. Watching the video of George Floyd shook loose everything I had buried. Memories surged through me like a tidal wave. I cried for the world, but I also cried for the seven year old girl who stood on a street corner, frozen, while a word meant to break her echoed in her ears.

I call them my episodes now. POC PTSD moments. Flashbacks of all the times I was reduced to a stereotype or a slur. But something was different this time. The world was watching. The world was marching. The world was finally listening.

For the first time, I did not feel alone.

Healing is not a straight line. It is a long road with days of strength and days of exhaustion. But I have learned this truth: the day hate found me was painful, but it was not the end of my story. It was the beginning of my voice.

I fight back by speaking.
I fight back by remembering.
I fight back by refusing to shrink.

We still have a long way to go. But I believe in the power of awareness and unity. I believe in the next generation and the one after that. And I believe that together, we can keep moving toward a world where no child learns hate before they learn their own worth.

This is my story.
This is my reminder.
We do not walk this road alone.