Berkley Center

“Are you sure about that hairstyle?” my friend asked as we sank into couches at work, the summer heat zapping our energy. With only a few days left stateside, we discussed my impending departure to Buenos Aires. “Of course!” I replied confidently.

I had made the conscious decision to place faux locs in my hair because they represented a great sense of nostalgia from my freshman year, full of life and endless possibilities. With the stress of student life and being in the midst of yet another wave of publicized degradation, disregard, and killing of black bodies, I needed something to symbolically recover the sparkle in my eye I came into college with. I would soon be immersed in a culture where very few people looked like me, so the locs acted as a manifestation of cultural pride and as a security blanket. And why not make a statement along the way? I wanted to know how people would react. Would it be the topic of conversation? How would I feel if I was asked about it? I always talked about being confident and standing up for my people, so why not start a conversation with my hair?… Boy, was I not ready!

97 percent of Argentina’s population is of European descent, while non-whites make up the remaining 3 percent. Upon arrival, my fellow students and I were briefed on culture, greetings, catcalls/dating, colloquial terminology, and of course race. I quickly learned that black people were exterminated by being on the front lines of wars and in neighborhoods ravaged by yellow fever. And of course not to take offense to “negro/negra” being used in a joking manner to call your friends lazy or reference their tanner skin tones. I grabbed onto my locs for comfort, but they too had started to unravel. 

I tried to keep all these reactions inside as I “adjusted.” And then it happened. One night a friend and I were racing from class to the subway trying to avoid the cold and make it to dinner when this little boy grabbed my hair, a smile on his lips, as he yelled, before throwing the locs into my face and returning to his father. What had just happened? And how was I supposed to react? I felt violated and didn’t feel comfort or protection from the hair that hung from my head. Why didn’t his dad apologize? Was I invisible? As my locs continued to wear and unravel, my exhaustion increased. Too many questions, being solicited on the street by calls of “negrita, negrita,” being whistled at, receiving unwanted stares in the clubs or the subway by overly curious people, and my hair being examined over and over again—I was under a microscope. 

I re-styled and hid the wear of my hair with scarves. I wasn’t prepared for the culture shock I experienced. I had arrived with my own pre-misconceptions that I would see darker-skinned Argentines who empathized with my struggle of marginalization, but they too had been pushed to the outskirts of society, as rare as the negrita. At home I was silenced, and here I was alien. I couldn’t breathe holding everything together, until one day I spoke up in class about my struggle and found solace talking with the other black students (four people out of nearly 100) in my program who felt similarly. I was revived. 

So how does one find the black girl in the city? It’s easy because she stands out like spilled ink on a white page. She may seem composed, carefree, and unaware as you stare in wonder at her strong countenance, but don’t be fooled because the black girl is trying to figure out why she can never fit. Why she wants to run away from explaining her worth, but must stay because, yet again, she falls in love with a city and culture that doesn’t understand her. But alas, like the oil sheen-stained auburn and deep brown freshly twisted locs that dangle from my head, I am renewed because of hope; hope that one day my younger friends and family will be traveling the world too, unafraid. That the kids I teach theater to and learn Spanish words from will continue to ask me questions about my culture and the world, so that blackness isn’t strange. That one day my history won’t be erased, I won’t be a spectacle, dehumanized, and told my life doesn’t matter. That one day, finding la negrita en la ciudad will mean she has a place.