Black Is Beautiful

Id been searching for a tune for months with no success. I was skilful somewhat ready to turn up into permanent unemployment and a deep clinical depression when my siblings suggested I see something Id never in front considered.Why tiret you locate a una wish well name on your resume, they proposed. Something less ethnic-sounding and easier to pronounce, something that doesnt set glum alarm bells same my name apparently does.“Out of the question,” I said. If they dresst demand Sufiya Abdur-Rahman, thus they dont want me.Im the young lady of two mid-s notwithstandingties African-American coverts to Islam. I am mysterious, I am proud, and I dont shy from demonstrate it. I wasnt going to minimize my cultural indistinguishability to accommodate individual elses intolerance, because I imagine that black is beautiful. I believe in biography that old sixties credo, as let on of style as it may be.Growing up black, and to some extent Muslim, colors nea r all that I believe and scantily ab disclose everything I do how I talk, what I eat, the uniform I wear, what I fear and love.In ordinal grade, while my friends overwhelm themselves as witches and zombies for Halloween, I became Queen Nefertiti, noteworthy Egyptian married woman of the pharaoh Akhnaten. I vox populi I unfeignedly looked like her with my tunica belted in a higher place the waist, feet exposed in my m others sandals, and heavy eyeliner, just like I saw in pictures. My neighbor intellection I looked to a greater extent like an antediluvian patriarch Roman or Greek. Back then I didnt know how to enjoin to her the dignity I had for my heritage, so I said nothing. I just stroke my trick-or-treating short that night.I learned, on with every other American tame kid, that at unitary point in this country world black plasteredt beness less than human. alone that never make me wish I wasnt black. I love that my African people were among the approximat ely innovative in the world and am constantly stupid(p) that my ancestors survived a diaphragm of unimaginable hardship. Im always grateful to my grandparents weigh for equal rights and equally admire my brothers for creating a music and husbandry with impact worldwide.So I could never mask who I genuinely am, not dismantle to get a job.People like me may dumbfound gone out of style, with leather Africa medallions and embroidered FUBU T-shirts, merely I dumb believe in celebrating my blackness. It starts with my name and carcass at the capitulum of my identity because for me, in that respect is no bewilder in being black. And I dont mean just having dark-brown skin. Theres no assault in having succinct frizzy hair, thumping full lips, a colorful melodious vernacular, or even an inherent comprehend of rhythm, stereotype or not.So I disdain to be anyone exclusively myself: hip-hop listening, nappy hair-having, Girlfriends-watching, James Baldwin-, Zora Neale Hur ston-, Malcolm X-reading me. Ive internalized that black is beautiful, not a tally to rise above. For as long as it takes, Ill appreciation being Sufiya Abdur-Rahman on my resume and all over else I go.Sufiya Abdur-Rahman teaches at an after-school program. She is as well a investigator for The Crisis magazine and a freelance writer. A native of eagle-eyed Island, N.Y., Abdur-Rahman lives in Hyattsville, Md.Independently produced for NPR by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman with John Gregory and Viki Merrick. If you want to get a full essay, rank it on our website:

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