Azariah T. — University of Pittsburgh, Nursing

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Though of the same bloodline, I’ve never fully been able to identify with the place
my parents call their home. They are of streets similiar to warzones, where clouds of
gunpowder linger over every opportunity, reminding it’s residents that as fast as you
could achieve success, tragedy could strike just as quickly. They belong to Baltimore,
but as of July 2007, I have belonged to Smyrna. A rural town in Delaware (population:
11,587) has become the site of my ever-continuing growth. It was where I was taught
reading, writing, and even the lyrics to several classic rap songs (Thanks, Dad). But there
was something that my parents’ experience in a largely segregated city school system
wouldn’t be able to help me with: navigating being a black girl in a community that didn’t
look like me.

I wasn’t oblivous about race for long. I distinctly remember in the early days of
Kindergarten entering my mostly Caucasian class with my curly, sandy brown hair in it’s
natural form. As you might assume, that went horridly as I was teased for my “puffy,
weird hair” to no end. That was the first racial microaggression I’d experienced and I had
to decide how to deal with it. The short term decision was tears, naturally. But when the
tears had dried what was left was a new ingraination in my undeveloped frontal cortex.
I’d either stand up for myself and risk isolation, or laugh along to keep the peace. For a
long time, I chose the latter. Self-hatred of who I was was became instinct at age 5. It
created a passiveness in me, where courage should have lived instead. It would’ve likely
resided there eternally if one conversation hadn’t completely diverted the course of who
I was.

In autumn of 2016, I was sitting at a lunch table with 3 other freshman girls much
like me: driven honors students. They were all white, because if you thought the schools’
lack of diversity was a joke, honors classes were the entire comedy show. Yet race didn’t
matter to me, until the discussion that made it matter most. The topic of the day was
police brutality and I will never forget the moment when one of my closest friends said
to me, “If you’re acting like a thug, you deserve to be shot.”. I can still feel the hostile
tone and connotation of her words making my skin burn like a forest fire. I looked to the
other girls for any form of allyship, but their eyes were barren. I didn’t have words to
debate her with, all I had was an anger like never before. I went into the bathroom with
tears streaming, quite alike the child with the “weird, puffy hair” that I had been 10 years
prior. But this time, I made a different choice on who I was to be after. I decided that
passiveness was an injustice to me and my race. So I got informed.

I read news articles on every talking point in African-American culture from police
brutality to lesser-talked about issues such as natural hair in the workplace. I became a
debater instead of the one to hold my tongue. All along my power was held not in my
ability to keep the peace, but in my ability to disrupt it. Now, I am known to speak my
mind. Honestly, I think my mouth has gotten too loud. An example being when my friend
wants someone to understand why the n-word shouldn’t be used, it is me, Azariah, that
they come to because I apparently “explain it so well”. I guess you could say that
diversity, equity, and inclusion(DEI) are so important to me because for many years the
people I were around did could not care less about it. Today and I am the first ever DEI
Chair for the University of Pittsburgh’s Nursing Student Association. I now have the
ability to help other girls like me feel like they belong in places that we clearly stand out.
I now get to help foster the inclusive environment that was never afforded to me all
those years ago as a 14 year old. I educate Non-POCs on the unique issues that we face
and it feels incredible to see how the level of allyship from my white peers has increased
throughout the years. Through the trials and stutters, I found my voice as a black
woman through rural Delaware, and I am better for it.