My mother didn’t have the budget for me to compete with the kids who had Jordans or AF1s or who rocked any of the more expensive brands. This was something I had hard feelings about when I was younger. Maybe that seems like a shallow thing to care about, but there was something deeper underneath. My friends and I based our self-worth on how fly our clothes were, because where else were we going to get self-worth from?Article continues after advertisement
All of our parents, if we even had them, were struggling. We didn’t see people who looked like us on TV unless they were playing sports or rapping. We knew we couldn’t just walk into a random room and be respected. We saw how people treated us and talked about us. Cops and store owners; cabdrivers and school administrators. It was like being Black and working class was something that we had done wrong. So, without even knowing it, we internalized those feelings. There weren’t that many ways to get any power, any sense of self in the world. And that feeling when you walked into a spot looking good—the way people looked at you, the pride you took in yourself—that was an important feeling to have.
It wasn’t just the world that made me feel like I was less-than because I had less. I felt that way in my home too. Even though we were living in the same home, my brother Demetrice and I were living two different class realities. He had a dad who showed up and cared for him. I had a dad who, for the most part, was never around. He had clothes and shoes and money in his pocket. I had to make do however I could.
