The first time I was aware of my Blackness is still a very vivid memory for me, even 19 years later.

This awareness came in my third-grade classroom. Prior to third-grade, my view of the world was that there was good and bad. Then, we began the chapter entitled “North America: Slavery” in our social studies textbooks.

As the chapter began, we learned about how African people were taken from Africa and brought to America as slaves, eventually becoming African Americans and present-day Blacks.