There was a time in my life the place I had no concept what it meant to be Black. Granted, most 6-year-olds haven’t got a concrete understanding of their race and tradition and what it means in a bigger context, however once I moved to a small town in Westchester, NY, from Ghana in West Africa, I used to be fully out of the loop. My skin was obviously brown so folks assumed I used to be acquainted with all of the cultural staples that Black People popularly establish with. As I went by way of my preteen and oh-so-complicated teen years, it grew to become tougher for me to navigate the cultural variations that I had grown up with, and those I used to be now anticipated to know. For some time, I did not really feel like I slot in properly anyplace.
My city was pretty numerous, so to hang around with the white youngsters raised eyebrows from different youngsters of colour in class. Nonetheless, I wasn’t hip to the music, kinds and slang of the Black and Hispanic youngsters, leaving me in an ungainly in-between place. So, I appeared to TV.
The late ’90s and early 2000s have been primetime for Black sitcoms. Every single day after faculty, after ending my homework, I might activate our TV and immerse myself within the comedy, drama, and heartfelt plots of those reveals. By means of them, I partially realized what it means to be Black in America. Extra importantly, I noticed myself in these characters in a method that gave me confidence to be Black in whichever method felt most pure to me.
Finally I discovered my place, by means of simply being myself. I made a various group of mates who represented quite a lot of races, backgrounds and experiences. Alongside the way in which, these tales advised on TV gave me a little bit of steerage that helped me totally come into my Blackness with confidence and pleasure.
