Lets stand in the shoes of being a black girl in Italy

How it feels to be one of the very small amount of black people in Italy.

First let me explain what it feels like. Imagine you're walking in a room with your friends, and except for everyone minding their business they all stare at you. Or imagine a room full of eyeballs staring at all your insecurities and judging your every move. Here's an easier example, imagine you're in a room full of people and you break a glass on the ground. You feel your stomach drop as everyone looks at you wondering, "what is this person doing here?". Just think of that embarrassment and how you feel, that's what it feels like every time I go anywhere.

Before I came to Italy one of my friends had showed me a TikTok of the most unliked people in each country. Turkey was the top for the most homophobic country, Iraq being one of the most anti-semitic countries, and Italy being second as the country that hates black people. When I found this out, I wasn't super surprised. I just felt uneasy because I felt like it was a warning from the universe saying, "You're about to go through one of the most challenging things in your life, are you even ready for that?".

Now that I am here I finally understand the things I would go through. It first hit me when I was taken to the hotel in Rome on my first day in Italy. There were around 250 students I met at that camp, and I was the only black girl. Ok let that marinate for a minute.

(comunque) Anyway...

I live in a small town, there aren't many people here in general, but that also means there aren't many black people. All people do is stare. Its like I'm an artifact in a museum. It use to make me uncomfortable but I'm kinda used to it now. Sometimes for my own pleasure I like to stare back and make direct eye contact with the person to see who looks away first, I tend to win most of the time. Jokes aside, it also makes me feel small. Like I have to hide myself in order to live here. Being surrounded by my white friends or white host family makes me feel a bit better because I feel protected, but I shouldn't need to have the need of protection. I should be able to walk around with no judgement.

In school I've seen only 3 other black kids. Again not super surprised, but I also get a lot of attention. Not in a bad way, just a lot of compliments on my hair and my lips. People love to touch my hair. In DC when someone touches a black girls hair its wrong and rude. Ive never really felt that way at all. I know I'm beautiful and I know my 4C hair is amazing and I don't need validation so I don't really mind. I'm not sure how I feel about it, I just think its really interesting to see the different norms of interacting with black girls hair in different countries. Here in Italy, I don't think they even know the issue surrounding touching a black girls hair.

Just today I was sitting alone in a park waiting for my friends and a white man walks past me and says "BLACK PEOPLE ARE GREAT!" Luckily that's all he said, but just being called out like that in front of people. Super embarrassing, I just had to laugh it off. Thank God I haven't had a bad interaction with someone about the color of my skin, I sure hope that I won't encounter anything worse than what I have already gone through.

I think its so unfortunate that I am struggling here a lot by being away from my family and friends, living in a small town, not having many friends here, and school being really difficult. Yet, I still have to go through another challenge because of the color of my skin. All of my AFS friends have the same struggles but I have this extra struggle that is caused by how I look. Its hard for me talk about this with other people because they just don't get it. Which makes sense because they don't encounter anything like this. However, my mom has taught me to not take in peoples judgement because of the color of my skin since I was a kid. So I have this built in adjustment of not paying attention to the haters. I hate that black people have to prepare themselves before they go out everyday, but that's a conversation for another time.