‘Every eye roll ... is a cry for help’

HS senior on far too many fellow Black girls

Note from Opinion Editor Amelia Robinson: Fort Hayes High School graduating senior Emma Arnold was a member of the recent panel discussion “Say My Name: Deconstructing the Black Girl Experience.” The event was sponsored by Columbus Public Schools and the Commission on Black Girls and featured Monique Morris, the president and CEO of Grantmakers for Girls of Color and co-founder of the National Black Women’s Justice Institute. The event was inspired by Morris’ film and book “Pushout.”

Excepts of Arnold’s comments are below. They are edited slightly for clarity.

“One of my most life-changing experiences, I was in middle school and I had a really good friend of mine who was not in the best of family situations — lots of abuse, lots of violence in the home.

Witnessing that made me realize, wow, I’m lucky. I’m blessed that I didn’t have to go through that.

I didn’t have to experience some of the most vile, some of the most heartbreaking experiences that Black girls and Brown girls go through on an everyday basis. I’m not saying I didn’t have a hard life, but Black girls, especially young Black girls, especially today, in the present, we are carrying so much baggage.

We are carrying children that aren’t being taken care of by the parents. We’re carrying not knowing what we’re going to eat when we get home, not knowing if we’re going to have a house to go to when we leave school and a lot of passers-by don’t recognize that or choose not to pay attention.

Every bad attitude, every eye roll, every neck roll is a cry for help. Every curse word that comes out of our mouth, every “forget you,” this-that — that’s a cry for help.

I see it so clearly now because I have seen the upbringing. I have seen the trauma that Black girls hold in and it is so important — I cannot stress this enough — it is so important to treat Black girls with care, to treat them with gentleness, because you don’t know what they’re going to go home to.

As for my friend in middle school, unfortunately, she didn’t make it. She died at age 16. She was a singer like me. She wanted to be big. She wanted to do great things, but because of the lack of attention people were giving her, she didn’t have an escape.

Black girls are so mistreated and truly – I’m trying not to cry – so

mistreated and so misused and often thrown off to the side.

It's hurtful to know that in this room I am loved. I am supported and I can tell by the energy that is being given off to me. But once I step outside those doors,

I'm just another Black girl to the passers-by.

I could be the next hashtag to the next passer-by. They don't know who I am. They probably don't care about who I am.

That's what we need to change. We need to change the invisibility of Black girls and Black women because we are seen. We are here. Whether you want us to be or not, we are here.”