3

Seeing The Doctor

When I was just a little kid, I ran into a weird incident at the dentist. Like most kids who are ripped from their homes and thrust into the inescapable office of mouth sorcery, I really didn't want to be there, and I tried to distract myself with my Babysitter's Club book. To make matters worse, the nurse wasn't being very nice to me or my mom, for reasons that didn't click at first. Then, in the hallway right outside our (OPEN!) door, she had a conversation with another nurse, joking that she didn't want to go through post-procedure discussions with us because "They wouldn't understand me anyway. I'm not sure they even speak English." It would've been better if they'd just told me, "Sorry, but your whole bone structure is just one big cavity."

2

Buying Makeup

I don't wear a lot of makeup. To be honest, some of this is due to the fact that a tube of quality lipstick costs as much as dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. But most of it is because, as any nonwhite woman will tell you, up until a few years ago, if your skin color was darker than "sunkissed Latina," there were almost no options for you.

Women of color have always had a notoriously bad relationship with the cosmetics industry because we can't find shit that matches our skin color. These companies deliberately just make their lines for lighter skin tones only, with a couple of "darker" foundations in the last few decades that aren't really fooling anyone. Iman (supermodel, goddess, wife of the late David Bowie) came out with a makeup line in the '90s that had more options, which helped a great deal. But overall, it seems the beauty industry would rather lose money than help women of color feel good about their appearances.

Enter that Barbadian ray of sexual sunshine Rihanna. She's been in the news lately because she's come out with her own makeup line called Fenty Beauty, which has truly changed the game. With 40 foundation shades (40), darker-skinned women are guaranteed to find a match for their skin tone -- something these other lines should have made a priority YEARS ago.

Why is this such a big deal? Because this world's Eurocentric standards of beauty have done so much damage to women of color that they've had to resort to using more toxic products in order to fit into that mold. Something that could have been easily resolved if these huge makeup companies had just included a few more shades. Or, you know, just generally done more to expand their definition of what beauty is (straight hair and light skin across the board doesn't exactly scream "diversity"). But god forbid they be forced to treat people like people. That would be crazy.

1

Writing (And Reading) Science Fiction

According to my parents, I've been scribbling stories down since I first learned how to hold a pencil. I came out of the womb writing exposition. I think at this point, I've dabbled in all genres, and feel comfortable in most forms of speculative fiction -- except futuristic science fiction. And before discovering Afrofuturism, I didn't realize black writers had even tried. Hell, historically, major genre works have rarely included anything to do with black people. As writer Saffron Alexander put it: "White creators would rather write about a race of war-hungry lizards living on Mars in harmony with Victorian soldiers than dare to imagine a black person included in their fantasy worlds."

Serious question: Do you ever sit and think about how there are virtually no people of color in science fiction stories? Fellow sci-fi nerds will be able to rattle off a handful, but I'm talking comparatively. Maybe that's because, as a genre, it's plagued by "structural, institutional, personal, and universal" racism, which are exact words from a report that states that less than 2 percent of more than 2,000 sci-fi stories published in 2015 were written by black writers. Most people would agree that the science fiction and fantasy community has a problem with race, but most (white) people who aren't in the community don't realize how bad it actually is. They're mostly concerned with arguing about The Last Jedi or worshiping at the altar of George R.R. Martin.

That's not an accusation or an attack. It's a very real problem that often doesn't get pondered until it's pointed out by a minority who's attempting to break that pattern. A huge problem is the idea that people think speculative fiction is saved from anti-blackness in the same way that assholes thought racism was abolished when Barack Obama was elected president. "A major science fiction film / book series has a black character in a lead or sort-of lead role? PREJUDICE ENDED. LET'S ALL HAVE MIMOSAS."

To put it bluntly, I'll let writer Troy Wiggins explain: "I have a better chance of being wrongfully convicted of a crime than I do of selling a piece to a science fiction magazine." Damn, dude. That's a painful mic drop if ever I heard one.

Archie also writes for BlackGirlNerds, and tries to follow as many cosplayers as possible on Twitter. Send her your pictures on Twitter.

If you loved this article and want more content like this, support our site with a visit to our Contribution Page. Or sign up for our Subscription Service for exclusive content, an ad-free experience, and more.

For more check out 5 Everyday Things (That Have Secret Racist Origin Stories) and 8 Racist Words You Use Every Day.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel and check out 7 Racist And Sexist Ads That Are Shockingly Recent - The Spit Take, and watch other videos you won't see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook. We're all friends here.

And to further expand your noggin, check out Cracked's De-Textbook: The Stuff You Didn't Know About the Stuff You Thought You Knew.

It's loaded with facts about history, your body, and the world around you that your teachers didn't want you to know. And as a bonus? We've also included the kinkiest sex acts ever described in the Bible.