Kemba Douglas has been, for as long as she can remember, the token black girl in predominantly white spaces.
Born in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., she lived in a mostly white neighborhood. She went to mostly white schools. She shopped and worked in mostly white stores, with mostly white customers and co-workers.
A move to Georgia with her family didn’t change much. She was still often the only black person around. It wasn’t hard, she said — it was just life.
But some parts of it were harder than others. She hated the stares she would get, the malevolent looks. She hated when people would ignore her after she gave a friendly hello; even worse when they threw rude comments her way. She never knew if it was because she was black, but she always suspected. Sometimes they eased her doubt, using racial epithets. Then she knew.
She was excited to move to Colorado last year, a state she felt was on the bluer end of the political spectrum. And the city she was headed for was the bluest of the blue, having turned out three times as many votes for Hilary Clinton as for Donald Trump: Boulder, home to the Buddhist-inspired Naropa University, where she would be pursuing a master’s degree.
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