cover photo — 16:9The first time someone asked me “what are you?” I was eight years old, standing in line for the water fountain. I didn't have an answer that fit on a worksheet. In a town where every house looked like the one beside it, I learned early that I was the variable — the thing that made the picture look different.
Suburbia sells itself as neutral. Manicured lawns, good schools, a certain quiet. But neutral is never neutral for everyone. For a Black teenager, the suburb is a place where you are simultaneously hyper-visible and completely unseen — the only one in the honors class, the one the security guard follows, the one whose hair is a “can I touch it” exhibit.
Hyper-visible, and invisible
There's a specific kind of tired that comes from being a representative. When you're the only one, every opinion you have becomes The Black Opinion. Every bad day becomes evidence. You start editing yourself before you've even spoken — a survival skill nobody teaches you but everybody expects.
“You learn to shrink and to shine at the same time. It's a full-time job nobody hired you for.”
My parents moved here for the schools. That's the story every family tells, and it's true. But the fine print — the part nobody warns you about — is that access and belonging are not the same thing. I had access to everything. Belonging was a different application, and the review process never seemed to end.
inline photo — 4:3Finding the others
Here's the part that saved me: I found the others. Not many — you could count us on two hands — but enough. We found each other in the back of the bus, in the one AP class, in a group chat that started as homework help and became something closer to a lifeline.
That's really why Tadele Teen Talks exists. Not to complain, and not to perform trauma for people who want to feel bad for a minute and move on. It exists because when you're the only one in the room, a platform full of your people is the room you wish you'd had.
What I'd tell my eight-year-old self
You are not the variable. You were never the thing that made the picture wrong. The frame was too small. Go find a bigger one — or better, build it, and leave the door open behind you.
This is the lead essay from VOL. 03, our Suburbia Issue. Read the full issue in Magazines.