Note: This post contains one count of explicit language; this is not to offend readers but to bring readers into the reality of my day-to-day life in the “developed” society that is America.

Dear Brethren,

This is why Hope and Hardships came about.

In 1990, my parents abruptly moved me from their homeland and stationed me in the United States.

They enrolled me in a high-end, hyper-evangelical college prep school that doubled as a segregation academy; this school was proudly affiliated with Bob Jones University.

On my first day of school, several of my beige-skinned classmates—and eventually, some teachers—made it known that I was subhuman.

And within a few days, I was greeted with a “Fuck you, Black girl” by a beige-skinned, dirty blonde-haired, blue-eyed and freckle-faced classmate who reiterated that “my kind” was not welcomed at a Christian institution.

For the next few years, I would eat lunch with my homeroom teacher or alone in the girl’s locker room, because I could not stomach being continually degraded amidst a sea of beige-skinned bodies during lunchtime in the school’s cafeteria.

In 1994, it became clear that being a dark brown-eyed, darker-skinned and nappy-haired being in the United States and on G-d’s Earth was a sin, and yet, I couldn’t understand the logic behind this “civilized” way of thinking.

That year, out of intense curiosity and deep pain, I began writing about skin tone bias to better understand why in the world would a good G-d create me by mistake.

In my freshman year of high school, I enrolled in a Bible Challenges course, and by that time, I had learned about the Ku Klux Klan, so it made sense to initiate an interview with a so-called “white supremacist” via email.

(More on that experience in a future post.)

For this course, students were assigned self-directed projects; for my first project, I chose to focus on white supremacists who deemed themselves Christians, and I received one of the highest marks for my presentation from a teacher who took much pride in rarely giving students an “A” on assignments.

In 2020, I came close to defecting from Christianity.

In 2024, I no longer blamed brown-skinned Christians who’ve opted out of the faith, because they’ve been silenced, gaslighted or treated as though they’re subhuman by beige-skinned Christians—of any political affiliation and tax bracket—who claimed to follow the heart of Christ.

As someone who has endured more than 30 years of abuses, assaults, aggressions and annoyances executed by beige-skinned Believers (and non-Believers) who expertly performed Christianity—be it online or offline—I’m used to being humiliated privately.

And, I’m e—x—h—a—u—s—t—e—d.

Also, as a darker-skinned woman, complex trauma survivor, immigrant and U.S. citizen whose understanding of human-ness was shaped by surviving America, bias is what I know best.

So, following a prayer meeting this month with a pastor who counseled me on divine calling,

I (reluctantly) launched Hope and Hardships to share my troubling and tiring experiences as a human being who is worn out from breathing as a brown-skinned being, especially when I’m engaging with beige-skinned beings who refuse to address the harmful behavioral patterns that stem from their pigmentation and phenotypic biases.

C’est la vie, right?

Well, for the empathetic earthlings out there who want to level up their bias competency by gaining insight into injurious or fruitless behaviors they may not know they’re acting on, I’m carving out a little corner on the internet to share stories from my childhood and adulthood that will serve as a guide for beige-skinned persons who are passionate about nurturing an emotionally rich community that would safely welcome me as a brown-skinned woman.

(Got questions related to my content? There’ll be an opportunity to send them my way.)

As counterproductive as it seems, my purpose is to expose our embedded biases without judgment, help us get comfortable in acknowledging said biases, and then break down bias-motivated behaviors by prodding the programming.

At the end of the day, if one allows a destructive construct to control their mind—because their programming may have them addicted to othering darker-skinned persons or, dismissing the dignity of darker-skinned persons for reasons that go beyond skin color—then living out a lifestyle that is not conducive to humanizing persons of my hue within one’s Christ-centered community has nothing to do with me; this matter is to be settled between the individual and the Creator of all beings.

This is about you, and your Christ.

Our brains are magnificent and malleable.

I’m here to show individuals the viruses that are running and ruining their operating system, so they can better understand why they do what they do to people who look like me, especially darker-skinned women.

I’m also here to encourage readers to reflect on their biases in collaboration with their faith, their trauma(s) and their one-on-one relationship with the G-d whose image we are fashioned from.

It doesn’t take much to faithfully humanize brown-skinned women who have and have not battled hellish decades in this biased bubble.

When it comes to skin tone bias, I don’t believe it will take a lifetime for one’s bias radar to kick in.

Once you know the essentials, you should be able to recognize biases and behavioral patterns on your own. And, what you do with this knowledge is up to you—not me.

If you’re ready for a perspective shift that may help you better envision what a complexion-inclusive community should look like, then I invite you to follow my turbulent, and at times, terrifying journey throughout America’s segregated spaces. 

For those of you who feel called to live out a higher standard of community while passing through Earth, I hope the stories of my hardships might convince you to perceive me as G-d does: an image bearer whose humanity is equal to yours.

Thank you in advance for reading my stories with care, and thank you for choosing to humbly plant a bold new Earth on this side of Heaven.

Souls are on the line,

Your highly melanated neighbor

P.S. This message is dedicated to my beige-skinned brethren, as well as my brown-skinned brethren. Namely, those who’ve privately wished they had not been born with “stained” skin or “hard” hair, and so have chosen to compensate for this “error” by adopting biases that idolize beige-ness.