“When I first moved here, I actually had someone say something racist to me and I didn’t even know it was racist. I had to go ask my mom about it and I didn’t understand why she was upset, and then she had to sit down with me and explain that not everyone will like me throughout my life, because of my skin tone. And that was really hard for me to understand because why does that matter? We’re all the same. 
“There are multiple encounters when I’ve had a lot of racial slurs thrown at me, or even backhanded compliments, “You’re pretty for a Black girl”, or “you can do that because you’re Black”. You can just say I’m pretty, you don’t have to point out that I’m a Black girl, because I already know I am one! But since I’ve been getting older...it just doesn’t affect me anymore. I love being Black, can’t change that. Don’t want to change it. 
“My hope is that everyone realizes that it really does not matter what skin tone you are. We’re all the same. It shouldn’t matter that my skin tone is a little bit darker than hers, or lighter than hers. It doesn’t matter. We’re all people here. Race doesn’t need to be a factor in this.”