The First (White-Assumed) Black Woman President: Five Years of Development through On-Campus Leadership

I was at the bar near my dorm with two of my new resident advisor friends. I still drank the first year of grad school, and three dollars for a Long Island iced tea meant I could handle being crowded by teenagers. The association for Black graduate student women was having its October happy hour near the bar. The group had asked my friend if she was a graduate student who wanted to join. "No, but she is," she said and pointed to me. I actually had already direct messaged someone about joining the GroupMe a few times. But I never got added.

My GroupMe avatar, much like my everyday appearance, is fairly ambiguous but often white looking. I didn't realize that for most of my life, growing up as the only Black family in a very WASPy suburb. There, I was Black. My wavy curls were nappy in this alt-right town; my full lips, n*ggerish. Entering college gave me identity whiplash as I went from being "the Black girl" to "not being Black enough"—a critique this mixed Black girl didn't have the language to rebuke. I had been the race people told me I was, but now they were telling me something different. My heart said they were wrong, but I couldn't get my voice to follow. I developed racial imposter syndrome.

Looking back, knowing my level of anxiety in the first year of graduate school, I am surprised that I went to every meeting of the on-campus group for Black graduate and professional students. I tried to sit next to the more visibly multiracial people; that way, when people would see them and subsequently categorize them as mixed, it wouldn't be a far jump when they saw light-bright me. I was shy and insecure then, but it was where I felt at home—even if not everyone thought I was.

The second meeting, after a third person couched what she was about to say with something like, "It's not that I have anything against white people . . .," I thought to myself, "Why is everyone talking like there's a white person here?" I looked around. Oh, me.

Over time, the group president and I became friends. She encouraged me to get involved in the graduate student body because "we need more Black voices there." I didn't have a strong voice back then. But I was going to find it because we needed more Black voices there.

At the end of the year, the group hosted an election. L., the president encouraged me to run for vice president of communications. I, still shy and nervous, was concerned about how I would juggle involvement with the second-year responsibilities of research and teaching. The way L. speaks with brilliance and conviction is very convincing—about everything. I didn't have a chance to worry about what people might think of the photo next to my name on the online ballot; besides, I was running uncontested.

The next year started, and I was on a team of beautiful leaders. During the second week of school, our board got a late notice about an event that needed a representative from our Black student organization. One by one, members started texting that they were not available. "I am free, but fine to opt-out if we want to send someone a little less mixed," I wrote. "Never say that again," L. replied. I don't remember what the other board members responded; I just know I never said it again.

I went to the event in our group organization shirt, which I later learned is called appearance work, a method multiracial people use in an effort to help folks correctly code them racially. There I spoke to two freshmen. They asked me earnestly, "Everyone keeps preparing us to feel like we don't belong here, but I don't feel that way at all. Is it definitely going to happen?"

I remember those words with perfect precision because months later, in what...