Before You Ever Knew Her

I’ve been telling her she’s beautiful since the day she was born. Every morning, every mirror, every moment I could catch her before the world got to her first. I didn’t dream in a million years that I would be raising a Black daughter in a time when hate doesn’t just come from the outside. Sometimes it comes from the inside. From us.

I didn’t prepare her for the room full of girls who look just like her. I didn’t know I needed to.

I keep seeing some Black women use their platforms to tear down other Black women, sometimes even girls and children. I see some Black men doing it too. And that hits differently, because Black women and girls should be able to expect support and protection from the men in their own community.

Our children are watching all of it. They are learning who gets defended, who gets degraded, what gets laughed at, and what everyone lets slide. Nobody has to sit them down and teach the lesson. They are already taking it in.

And then we wonder why our daughters sometimes look at each other with suspicion instead of recognition.

What we refuse to deal with doesn’t simply disappear. It can grow, change shape, and become something our children end up carrying too. And that’s what keeps bothering me.

So I want to ask a different question than the one I started with.

Not just: Who taught you to hate her?

But this one first: What were you taught about her before you ever knew her?

Because most of the time, I don’t think hatred walks into the room first. An assumption does. A girl meets another girl she has never spoken to, and something has already been decided. Something about her hair. Her skin. Her body. Her attitude. The way she talks. Where she’s from. Who she must be. Before a single word passes between them, something is already there.

I’m not talking about two women who have known each other for years, hurt each other, disagreed, or fallen out. I’m talking about the woman you don’t know. The girl you’ve never spoken to. The one you have already decided you don’t like.

When did she stop seeing her and start seeing what she had been taught to see?

Nobody sits our daughters down and announces a lesson. It doesn’t come with a syllabus. Sometimes it comes through praise. “You have good hair.” But what hair is not good? Sometimes it comes through a joke that everybody laughs at. A comment about somebody being too dark. A warning about a certain kind of girl before that girl has done anything at all.

The change in somebody’s face when a woman walks into the room. Who gets called pretty. Who gets called loud. Who gets called difficult. Who gets the benefit of the doubt and who doesn’t.

A child can watch all of that and learn the lesson without anyone ever explaining it. That’s how it gets passed down.

Colorism is one clear example. We still talk about skin and hair in ways that can tell a girl something about her value before anybody knows a thing about her character. We did not create the world that taught people to treat lighter skin or certain features as more beautiful, more acceptable, or more worthy. But we can repeat those lessons. We can reinforce them. We can hand them to another generation without even realizing what we’re doing.

You may not have created what you inherited. What you do with it once you can see it, that’s yours.

I also want to be honest about something else. Not every conflict between Black women is self-hatred. Some of it is jealousy. Some of it is class or status. Sometimes two people simply do not like each other. Sometimes there is real history between them. Sometimes somebody actually did something wrong. I don’t want to take every disagreement between Black women and turn it into proof of some deeper problem. That’s too easy.

What I’m asking about is something more specific. What did she actually do? What do you know about her because you experienced it for yourself? And what did you decide about her before she ever gave you any evidence? Was it actually her? Or did you carry something into the room with you?

People question things. People reject things. People reach a point where something they have believed for years no longer holds up once they really look at it. Maybe you were taught something about dark-skinned women. Or light-skinned women. Women with natural hair. Women from a certain neighborhood. Women who speak a certain way. Women who have money. Women who don’t.

Being taught something doesn’t make it true. And being handed something doesn’t mean you have to keep carrying it.

I think about the people who came before us. I don’t know everything they thought. I don’t know what every person believed, how they treated one another, or what motivated every act of resistance. I don’t need to pretend that Black people in the past were perfectly unified in order to respect what they survived and what they made possible.

They lived under conditions meant to control nearly every part of their lives, and still people formed families, cared for children, resisted, built communities, disagreed, survived, and kept going. Their survival made room for us.

So what are we doing with it?

The end of legal slavery did not erase every idea used to justify it. Ideas about inferiority, beauty, worth, and who belonged where did not simply disappear. Some survived. Some changed shape. Some continued through institutions, culture, families, and ordinary habits. Some people resisted those ideas. Some repeated them. And some of them can still show up in the way we see one another.

Because inheritance is not only what someone leaves you intentionally. Sometimes it is the thing nobody questioned.

I don’t want my daughter inheriting that as normal.

My daughter is getting older. I want grandchildren someday. And they will be Black. So I find myself thinking about the generation I’m raising her into and asking what we’re handing down as if it’s simply the way things are. I don’t want her walking into a room full of her own people and feeling like she needs to brace herself.

Why should she have to feel less in a room full of girls who are supposed to be hers?

I think about her daughter sometimes. A little girl who doesn’t exist yet. Will she walk into a room full of Black girls and feel like she’s home? Or will she walk in already wondering who doesn’t like her?

Will she look around and see other girls? Or will she see everything she has been taught about those girls before she has had the chance to know any of them?

That is what concerns me most. What are we teaching them to see?

I still believe in something bigger than what I can currently see. But belief without action is just noise, and we already have enough of that. We say accountability. We say grace. We say kindness. Then our children watch what we actually do.

So I’m not here to add more words to the noise. I’m asking the question because I think we have to be willing to answer it.

When your daughter walks into a room full of girls and women who look like her, what do you want her to feel?

What we do today is the answer.