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My story starts on my 5th birthday. When I was transitioning from 4 to 5 years, I had been fantasising about a Cabbage Patch Doll. When I was presented with a large, wrapped box from my mother, I was certain my fantasy was about to come true. Upon unwrapping the gift, however, my excitement soon turned to disappointment after seeing that while I had in fact received a Cabbage Patch Doll, she was Black. I can remember just sitting there staring at the box, feeling sad. This doll was not beautiful like the White doll I wanted, and it did not look like the kids I went to school with or the teachers in my class.
My sadness and disappointment were not things I could articulate, understand at the time, but I felt them, nonetheless. Essentially, I thought this doll was less than because it was Black, which was an internalisation of the messages I had received at that very early age. It reflects a sense of inferiority that Eurocentric views associate with Blackness, which ascribes a higher social status to White people and associate Black people with negative traits. Although I, like other children of this age, had not actively begun the process of forming a self-defined sense of identity, the shame and alienation I associated with being Black became background noise that I had to overcome later in life.
Like countless Black children before and after me, this reckoning propelled me beyond the passive absorption of Eurocentric cultural norms and beliefs into an active examination of what it means to be Black. In my youthhood I started to join initiatives that explored Blackness and Black experiences; progressing from a positive racial socialisation to a positive Black identity development. Essentially, I began the process of challenging the Eurocentric worldview I was socialised into as a child. Gladly, I was able to have corrective experiences that changed the negative internalised views I had around being Black. I now feel good about being Black and see it as a source of pride. |
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Published on 13.07.2026 at 10:19 
