When I was six years old, I would wake up, dress myself in mismatched outfits and admire myself in the mirror, eat breakfast with my mom, and go to school. My teacher would guide us through math and science, but my favorite part of the day was Reading Time. Our librarian would sit our class of 25 little kids in the corner of the library and read us a story. At the end of the day, I’d go home and my parents would help me with my math. I’d play with my dolls, and after dinner my family would sometimes watch a Disney movie. I loved the princesses; I always wanted to be one. Then, I’d pretend to fall asleep and my dad would carry me up the stairs, where my mom and dad would both tuck me in, kiss my forehead, and turn out the light.

When I was six years old, Jay-Z’s The Black Album was released. Every morning, I admired myself in the mirror and saw in me a princess. During Reading Time, our librarian would read us books of little white boys and girls playing, learning, growing, and I saw myself in them. When my dad got home every night, he would be able to help me with my math. All of the dolls I played with were white. All of the Disney princesses I watched were white. I was able to fall asleep knowing that I was safe and loved, even after my parents turned out the light.

I got through middle school with my head in a book and with a close-knit group of friends, and we were all very dramatic. She said this, he said that, she did this, can you talk to her for me? We were preoccupied with each other and with running out of sight from the creepy security guard who would say our shirts were too low-cut and our skirts were too short and that he’d make us change into our gym clothes. But like so many kids at that age, we were too preoccupied with ourselves to notice how 80% of the students in our classes were white. Or how the school administration brought in police and K-9 squads to sniff weed out of student lockers. Or how the next day, a handful of minority students were gone. We didn’t notice any of it, because they weren’t in our classes to begin with. We hadn’t known them. And so we continued, saying we were scared of a quiz or of gaining weight or of the drugs that we knew the popular kids (all white) were getting into. But we weren’t really scared. We knew we were safe.

In high school, my freshman year class was quickly amid scandal as three boys were caught passing around sex tapes, not only of them having sex with three freshman girls, but without the girls knowing they were being filmed. The boys were expelled and only one of the girls’ names got out. She transferred in weeks. Some said the boys got community service, others said they got off with a warning. Nobody knew for sure, but by the end of the month, we did know that the boys were at private schools nearby. Sophomore year, my gym teacher made all of us line up and do yoga, except he only taught us upward and downward dog, and he would walk behind us, down the lines of fifteen-year-olds with our pubescent hips high in the air and his eyes on us all. “Move your hips up, more toward me,” he’d say, and we did because what else could we do? Nobody said anything, and we did as we were told. Eight years later, I’ve just learned that the same coach yelled at a black basketball player for being too slow, saying he’d mop the floor with the boy’s dreadlocks. But still, nobody said anything, not even to other students, and for that reason most of us didn’t know what he’d said. Gossip stayed localized to our cliques; he said, she said, do you think our gym teacher is kind of creepy? Much like our middle school honors classes, our high school APs had fewer and fewer minority students as we neared graduation. In all the time I’d been there, we’d had countless pep rallies and dances, but not a single Black History Month assembly. A year later, I heard they tried to shut one down after it was proposed. The students fought hard and took the issue online, and they were finally allowed an assembly. In the end, a student somewhere in the crowd yelled out the n-word, and everybody talked about it on the way back to their classes.

By the time I went to William & Mary, I enrolled in classes and subjects I was never presented with before: Psychology as a Social Science, Language and Culture, African American Literature. I hadn’t realized it before I went to college, but the amount of African American lit I was required to read in my entire life was miniscule—the only ones I can remember were Frederick Douglass’s narrative and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, both of which were optional. So I swam in the words of Harriet Wilson, Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, Toni Morrison, and so many more. First, I cried; then, I got angry. Angry that the only black doll I saw in stores when I was young was a single American Girl Doll, costing more than a hundred dollars. Angry that my middle school brought in police to take away minority students with weed in their lockers but didn’t persecute the popular white kids who were passing pills around in the cafeteria. Angry that my high school protected the teachers who preyed on children, who tried to silence the Black voices who were calling for some recognition of their culture and history. Angry that underneath all of the sexualized wrongs I felt through my life, racist wrongs were right there and I hadn’t noticed. Angry that I had gone 19 years without being angry. Angry I had lived my whole life not seeing what was going on around me. And then, amidst all the anger, a new sense of resolve. A sense of intention that I was and still am grateful hit when I was only 19.

The first time I heard The Black Album, I didn’t listen. I mean really listen. I heard it and moved on to the Jay-Z album I knew better, Watch the Throne, which was much more prevalent in my generation. Parties played “N***as in Paris” and “Who Gon Stop Me,” and we all danced and drank and didn’t listen.

Now, every time I listen to “Moment of Clarity” I feel even more anger and resolve than I did as a nineteen-year-old, given all of the hate that’s come to light in the four years that have passed. In the past four years I’ve kept my eyes open and receptive to everything that feels wrong, even if only for a second. Jay-Z poeticizes:

Fuck perception! Go with what makes sense
Since I know what I’m up against
We as rappers must decide what’s most important
And I can’t help the poor if I’m one of them.

I cannot help those who don’t understand what’s really going on—the discrimination and pain Black people and other minorities are feeling—if I don’t try to understand it myself. It doesn’t matter what we perceive to be true. There were no Black dolls when I was six years old, but there were little Black girls who wanted them. There were no Black princesses, and so some little Black girls didn’t see themselves as princesses, even though they all are. We believed our school administrations would protect us, but they employed men who sexualized young females like myself, persecuted minorities and silenced them, and let the white students who committed serious crimes amongst their peers walk free. Little I perceived made sense in the end, and only now that I’m in my early twenties am I understanding that we need to decide what’s most important, because we’re up against systems that will continue to skew our perception if we let them. If we’re comfortable knowing that what we see isn’t real.

—Nicole Efford