Growing up, one of my favorite shows was Girlfriends. The 2000s sitcom explored the daily corporate and social lives of Black women in modern America. While Girlfriends might not seem like an appropriate show for an 8-year-old to connect to, it did help me realize the importance of Black female friendships. The characters encouraged one another through the ups and downs of unapologetically accepting their identity, while also emphasizing the value of having loyal friends by your side throughout life’s many stages. Watching reruns throughout the years made me want to experience it for myself when I got older.
However, it was nearly impossible for me to create the same Black friendships that I had seen on TV during my time in school. I grew up in a small town in Northern California with a 5% Black population, and it showed — I was typically the only Black kid in any of my classes. During my younger years, I met a few Black students in my grade, but it was difficult to build and maintain a relationship as we were never in the same classes, and I was always transferring to schools outside of my home district. Before I knew it, I was a high school sophomore who had failed to develop meaningful friendships with any other Black girls in my area.
Fortunately, that year, I began to participate in more extracurricular activities, which is how I met one of my best friends. Kendall and I were both sprinters in track and field, and we later found out that we went to the same elementary school as children and were playmates.
We began to bond over our previous encounters and shared interests, but she was also one of the first people I could talk to about being Black in a largely white environment. We spent practically every day together debating the best methods to care for our natural hair, our favorite R&B musicians, and, most significantly, our shared hardships of facing racism. Kendall helped inform me about subtle racism and microaggressions, primarily in the classroom, and talking to her about it offered me a sense of freedom from bias or judgment because she understood where I was coming from.
Also at this time, I reconnected with my old middle school friend Nevaeh, and our friendship evolved in a different way than mine and Kendall’s. Instead of focusing on the problems we experienced, Nevaeh and I would discuss the exciting intersections of being Black girls in white environments. Nevaeh and I were avid fangirls, and she introduced me to the boyband PrettyMuch. She would introduce me to other Black fangirls in the fandoms that we were a part of, and she would remind me how much fun it was to embrace my unique identity in all spaces that I found interest in.
My friendships with Nevaeh and Kendall were my most defining ones when I was younger, and they helped me discover more about myself. While my friendship with each of them operated on an individual level rather than the group I had envisioned while watching Girlfriends as a child, it did help me learn more about the types of friendships that I wanted in the future — and once I reached college, I began to put that into practice.
When I began attending college in person in 2021, I wanted to intentionally seek out a Black community during my time there. My former roommate Naima was one of the first Black friends I made in college. When we met, I was a sophomore and she was entering her senior year, and she acted as my older sister in terms of navigating college.
She and the rest of my roommates at the time taught me how to live independently away from the familiarity of my parents’ house, but Naima also taught me a lot about myself on a personal level. She taught me how to properly care for my hair and drove me to different African beauty shops in our college town to shop for Black products together. She also gave me a lot of suggestions on what classes I should take in college — African American Studies being one of them — to learn more about my history and background straight from the perspective of African-American professors.
She was also working while attending college, and she indirectly taught me what it’s like to work in the corporate world as a Black woman, as well as the most effective ways to navigate that sense of identity in environments where there aren’t many others like you.
Naima was one of the first to push me to attend other Black community functions if I wanted to establish stronger friendships. Per her advice, I started attending events hosted by the Black Student Success Center and joined the Black Student Union on campus. The Success Center hosts weekly critical dialogue discussions that mostly focus on the intersections of the African diaspora in America.
I used to attend the chat every week, and I felt it was a safe space in which I could be completely open and transparent. I began to spend a lot of time at the Success Center and its social gatherings, where eventually I met the majority of my Black friends on campus, some of whom later became my current roommates.
My housemates this year are exactly what I imagined a Black female friendship to be when I was 8 years old, laying on the living room floor watching Girlfriends. To best describe our dynamic, my roommates are my sisters, and each individual relationship I have with them is unique and offers me new life lessons.
They taught me to unapologetically embrace myself and who I am. We always compliment one another, whether it be for our taste in fashion, how we do makeup, or even how we style our hair. I enjoy the little things my roommates and I do together that I can’t really do with anyone else, like helping each other take down our braids while watching a movie, or when they teach me how to effectively use makeup to complement my skin tone and distinctive facial features — something that I never learned on my own.
My roommates and I routinely sit down and have “deep talk sessions” about what it means to embrace Black femininity or attend college as a Black student. We may discuss finding love while being Black, the Black representation we saw in our youth, or even how we want to show our identity in the careers we want to pursue.
Our deep talks helped me grasp the power I have in my identity, which unwittingly led me to be more comfortable being outspoken in my work — embracing my Blackness and how it intersects with pop culture or the interests I explore. I feel vulnerable and simultaneously the most confident when I’m in our group setting.
Of course, like many friend groups, we don’t always agree and sometimes argue, but they’re still one of the highlights of my college experience, and they’ve taught me the significance of finding support and connection in people who look like me.
Coming to college, I had doubts, but now that I’m living my childhood dream, it truly warms my heart to know that I’ve finally discovered a huge circle of people who love and support me. I believe it is a unique experience to have friends who understand you because of your shared journey of discovering your racial identity in the world. While I’m thankful for all of the wonderful friends I’ve made in my earlier years and in college, I’m also grateful for the Black community that I built at my university, which enabled me to finally feel seen, and showed me more about myself than I knew before.