“Oh, I have short wide pig nose. Todd’s nose is too tall,” Bee looks back at me from the front seat for confirmation. I want to gag. From the driver’s seat, Todd chimes in echoing Bee’s sentiment that his Roman caucasian nose was “too big” but my eurasian nose is “just right.” I shift in the back seat of the car, every part of me feels unsettled to the point where I can’t sit still.

These are racially charged comments of self hatred. I burst out from the back and try and explain why those comments are wrong. I felt sort of helpless as they brushed off my comments like rain falling off waxy tree leaves. “Oh, it’s not a big deal,” they comment back.

But self hate is a big deal. It’s a huge deal.

Bee you don’t have a “pig nose” you have a nose that’s small, round, and beautiful like my favorite camellia flower. I want to shout Malcom X at you from the back seat of the car but my mouth won’t find the exact words, bits and pieces of one of his speeches echo through my head. “Who taught you to hate yourself? …Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet?…You should ask yourself to hate being what God made you.”

I believe everyone is fully entitled to be content with themselves, racial identity included. No one should feel shame for things out of their control.

Todd I’m uncomfortable with how you complain to me that many of the white girls in your classes are “unintresting.” I wonder why you are telling this to me. I’ve lived in a white community living in one midwestern town since I was a few months old. I wear ugg boots, yoga pants, and have a starbucks card, I shouldn’t be any more “interesting” than the other basic bitches in your poetry class. I refuse to be your “interesting eurasian girl.” Then tell me I am interesting and not like the other girls I become T.S. Elliots’ Purfrock pinned to a wall like a bug. I don’t know what to say to you.

“The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

And how should I presume?”

Todd, hate to break it to you but you are white. Your mother is white, and your future daughter will likely be white. I know you think your nose is too big but the greeks and romans wouldn’t have made marble statues with similar noses if there was anything undesirable about it.

Bee has a wonderful nose. Todd has a wonderful nose. I have a wonderful nose.

…

This recent event jars me back to when I was fifteen and lived in Japan.

“Oh I love your nose, it’s perfect, not too wide like an asian nose and not too tall like a caucasian nose.” “I want to marry a white man so I can have beautiful eurasian children like you.” I remember asian women saying these things to me in casual conversations.

I ate these comments up like powdered lemon squares; I liked them and thought they were compliments.

At fifteen I didn’t know how sour they could be, instead I internalized it and thought by God’s grace I was some “beautiful eurasian.” This disgusting arrogance was one way internalized racism was manifesting it’s black tendrils in me.

For a little while, I bought into the lie of supremacy but called it self love.

…

When I was 15 I lived in Japan for a year for a study abroad trip. The women who assisted my english class was pregnant so the english club after school decided to throw her baby shower. She is a white woman from South Africa who I become close friends with.

During the party I remember some of the girls collectively commented how Abby and I have “good faces” but they have “flat face,” their term for it was “paper face.” Abby distraughtly reassured the girls that having european features doesn’t make someone beautiful. That moment of obvious self hate has stayed with me since.

Self hate is ugly from the outside. It is ugly from the inside.