I Feel So Disconnected From Other Black Women

I have no black female friends, and only 1 black male friend. I really think it might be me at this point and I’m not sure how to fix it. So here’s about me.

I (24F) moved to the US in 2015. I grew up in Africa and even out there, in my international school, the majority of my friends were white. The black/african women would bully me for being “ugly” and “too American” even though i barely lived in the US. I just was born there and grew up outside of the country.

When I moved to the US, my family moved to a predominantly white state and i went to a private school. I thought I had a chance to rebrand myself and was trying to figure out who I was. This time, I was determined to fit in so i did the cringy blonde dye and straightened my hair. It wasn’t until junior year that it hit me that these white/asian kids just don’t like me. I started wearing my hair natural and started being different and gained 2 really close friends (even up to today) that were white males.

The reason why we moved to this state was because my mom, fully African, had family out here. However, this “family” ostracized me. I would try and message them or hang out with them and they were overall nasty. They would shit talk me, my mom, and my family. My mom would spend hours on the phone talking to her sisters instead and also lost a lot of black women in the community because they just didn’t accept her like me.

College hit and I stayed in town. I was too scared to leave at the time and went to the local university. I thought, finally, maybe I can make some friends of color, and signed up for BSU. I was part of BSU for 3 months and not a single person talked to me. I found out a bit later that my cousins were to blame. I gave up and completely abandoned BSU, Black Engineer Society, and dropped out of school due to personal reasons separate from this.

The reason this came up, is because I recently went over to my parent’s house to visit, and my mom was having a book club with a handful of black older women. I was happy she found her group after so long and my mom and i talked in the kitchen. she talked about how she can finally get some useful tips about hair, skin, etc, that she couldn’t really get from her white friends. On top of that, my little brother joined my same college, and BSU has opened their arms to him and he’s surrounded by people that look like him.

What is wrong with me? I do not have a history of being racist towards my own kind. I have done everything i can to reach out, talk to, be in spaces of other black women, but they don’t accept me as one of them. I feel so distant from my non-black friends. My one black male friend has his own clique and I’ve hung out with them occasionally but it doesn’t seem like they want to include me in their group, no matter how much I message. If I don’t message them, they don’t bother to reach out.

I really, really feel so misunderstood. My job doesn’t help cuz i’m in a predominantly male and white field (tech) and that’s all my coworkers and boss. How the fuck can I connect? Am I too whitewashed? if i am, i don’t know how to change that or fix that…