Danielle Small > Quotes

“Why can’t white people say the N-word?” In this “post-racial” America that is the question I get the most from my white peers. I figure that maybe something has crippled their fingers to the point that they can’t search the many educational websites that exist or are ignorant of the nearest library. Anyway, they see me (often the only person of color they have extended conversations with because of forced circumstances like living situations or extra time between classes) and feel compelled to ask me everything about being black. Who told them that the NAACP knighted me the official black ambassador last month?”
― Danielle Small, Confessions of a Token Black Girl

“Racism is the same, I’m just the one that’s changing. I don’t have it all figured out and never will, but I take solace in the fact that through all the bullying, hate crimes and microaggression, I have only furthered my race education and worked to uncover my identity. Not the identity that is portrayed in media, but what being black means to me. I’ve spent most of my life running away from my blackness, thinking that that was the answer to racism. But now I welcome my blackness and face racism, knowing that it won’t go away and it is something that requires patience and thick skin.”
― Danielle Small, Confessions of a Token Black Girl

“Personally, I don’t use the word N-word at all (even in its casual form “nigga”), but I understand its re-appropriation by the group of people that it victimizes. In the same way I understand why women call themselves bitches or sluts. That’s why white people can’t use it, because they aren’t reclaiming anything.”
― Danielle Small, Confessions of a Token Black Girl

“Progress can be made if our society recognizes racism in all its forms, instead of its radical extremes. It’s that ignorance that fuels racial profiling programs like the NYPD’s Stop and Frisk program. It’s that ignorance that blinded the media to their own prejudices in their thuggish portrayal of murder victim Trayvon Martin. And it’s that ignorance that needs to cease for society to reach further levels of equality and truly view people of color as human beings instead of caricatures and/or stereotypes.”
― Danielle Small, Confessions of a Token Black Girl

“pleaded with my mom to straighten my hair. I didn’t want the aggressive nature of my natural kinks to intimidate my peers and teachers. I repressed parts of my personality. No longer would I be a fiery Jamaican. I noticed quickly that classmates and teachers were afraid of me for no reason. Once during coloring time in art class a girl wanted to ask me for a crayon, but she struggled to muster up the words and the courage to ask. It wasn’t that I was hoarding all the crayons,”
― Danielle Small, Confessions of a Token Black Girl

“knew from experience that most people who met me in my itty-bitty town saw me as a representative of the entire black race from African Americans to Black Cubans. I knew anything I did wrong would be a permanent strike against the Black race. This was a lesson I learned from pretty much everywhere: media stereotypes, offhanded comments from strangers and family members, the fact that white people could get away things with black people couldn’t. A recent example would be the praise Miley Cyrus received for doing the black dance known as twerking (“dance move that involves a person shaking their hips and bottom in a sexually provocative manner”) in a video, yet the YouTube comments on videos of black girls twerking condemn them as shameful and disgraces to their races.”
― Danielle Small, Confessions of a Token Black Girl