Brittney Patterson
Vicki Bozzola Jones
English 111 Section 2003
2 November 2013
The Troubled Color Since when does the pigmentation of a female’s skin determine the way that she’ll act in a relationship. The mere fact that men think it does is outrageous to me. Throughout my high school years I tend to have noticed that young men strayed away from black girls. Being that I am a black girl I wanted to know the reason behind this, the most common responses that I received were that we’re “angry, ghetto, and uneducated.” I am tired of men not wanting to get in a relationship with a black girl because they have too many “problems”. “Why do you always look so mean Brittney?” Something that I hear almost every day, whether walking to and from class or sitting at my desk. It’s not that I do it intentionally, it just appears to be that way. Although my friends know that I’m not a mean person, they tell me that if they didn’t know me I would come off as a mean girl. Guys normally don’t like to approach or talk to me because of my facial expression, to them I appear to be “stuck up” or “too good”. Which is the total opposite of who I really am, just like any person I have bad days and other times I am so focused on life itself that my facial expression changes but it’s hard to convince them once they’ve already made this assumption. The “ghetto” is the part of a city where people apart of a minority live. This word is often used to describe African Americans, specifically women. Society has created the image that all black women have long weave, long nails, loud voices, and bad vocabulary. Guys that are easily influenced by the media believe that black women are “ghetto”. I was raised in a small town in Missouri where I was expected to be a lady, which in my upbringing consisted of being respectful, nonjudgmental, but little things like my nails and my clothes caused me to be labeled as “ghetto”. Like any girl, I like to get my nails done, and dress differently from everyone else, adding my own touch on things. Is it me to blame for wanting to look nice? I’ll never forget the time that I walked into my History class and the “class clown” looked at me and said, “Look at Brittney’s nails you guys, she must have went to the ghetto to have them done.” I never knew something as simple as nails and clothes can cause a person to be labeled as “ghetto”.