![]() By joining the team, she hoped that the white cheerleaders’ “desirability could lather me like soapsuds to the skin, polishing me off until I was just as white as them.” She intuitively understands both the boundaries placed upon her black girl body and her own attempts to flee to whiteness for freedom. At 10 years old, her only dream was to be a white cheerleader. ![]() For Jerkins, it was when she tried out for her elementary school cheerleading team. Sometimes it’s when your childhood crush tells you that he doesn’t think black girls are pretty. ![]() Sometimes it’s the moment when slavery is discussed in class and you realize the other kids are looking at you. There’s a moment in most black people’s lives when they realize they’re black-and that to be black is to be undesirable. ![]() To be young, gifted, and black in a white setting is to fight constantly between capitulating to institutions that were never meant for you, or proving yourself a stereotype. ![]()
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