'I'm Tryna Get Like You': How Joy Becomes Infectious In the Village Raising Black Kids

A culture of compliments in Black communities makes joy a group effort. It is the reason why no matter where you go in the world, 'we see you!'

"I'm Tryna Get Like You"

"I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it."

Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982

When I first moved to Bed Stuy, back in 2008, I didn’t know anyone except my roommate, a friend from college who convinced me to leave the Bay Area and relocate clear across the country. It didn’t take much convincing, I was an adventurer who happily flew by the seat of her pants. But my unshakable tenacity melted to the floor once I touched down in New York. It was an entirely new environment, with new smells and new accents and faces that were void of that California flavor I had become accustomed to. The first night after arriving and haphazardly unpacking my things, I cried in the shower and then desperately searched for flights to return home.

The city was chilly and unwavering and the people were unapologetic and forceful. The noises were harsh and unforgiving and I wanted to feel the warmth of something familiar. My first week was a tough one, but I persisted. I went out in search of a job, anything to keep my half of our $1400 rent paid. I ended up temping and landed a two-week gig at a corporate real estate office run by an aged mogul who was so old he didn’t even have a computer in his office; just a pen and pad.

I sat out in the secretary pool, doing almost nothing but answering the phone and taking down messages. On the right of me was an Asian woman who proudly declared that she was born and raised in Manhattan. On the left of me was a Black woman who was temping between masters degrees. I don’t remember their names, but I remember what was said to me when I sat down for the first time, awkwardly searching for my place.

“You look scared,” said the Asian woman, chuckling to herself.

“Be quiet,” said the Black woman, fixing her gaze to mine, “You look brave.”

I said thank you, shyly, then excused myself to go cry in the restroom. She saw me. Like, really saw me. As if she had read a transcript of my life up to that moment, she saw my bravery when everyone else just saw a lost new girl who didn’t belong there. It was in that moment that I remembered, I am brave. And instead of searching for return trips home, I started searching for community.

It Hits Different When We See Us

There is something so specific about hearing words of affirmation from someone who looks like you in a world that faults you for existing as anything but white, cis or male. For Black folks, a well-served, well-intentioned compliment feels like a wash of sun over our skin; a deep reminder of our humanity. While it feels so incredibly spiritual, it likely doesn’t always sound that way to the untrained ear.

“Sis that yellow is yellowing!”

“Come on fresh braids!”

“Ay yo, I’m just tryin to get like you my brother.”

“You lookin’ casket sharp!”

If you don’t know us, you won’t realize that these words, with their distinct abruptness and fragmented delivery, are actually a prayer of protection. A covering of love. A poem.

"I was going through TSA at Hartsfield-Jackson. I pulled down my mask and cheesed at the gate agent as I handed her my ID, and she told me I had a pretty smile."

Tanasia Kenney, Atlanta, Georgia

Many of us have at some time or another existed in white spaces; be that at work, school, or neighborhood, and according to Rachel Alicia Griffin, PhD., Associate Professor of Communication and Race at the University of Utah, that is a burden that weighs on all of us. “In predominantly white spaces, the normative cultural traditions, if you will, are still committed to color blindness and or post-racialism,” she said. “What I love about that moment,” Dr. Griffin went on to explain, “in addition to the validation and the affirmation — it's the absence of the struggle to be seen.”

We do, as Black people, tend to be tasked with unpacking compliments from the general white public. When someone compliments our hair, are they doing so because it's a foreign artifact? Are they trying to find something unproblematic to say? Do they like our hair because it’s straighter that day, more aligned with Eurocentric beauty standards? Do they fully grasp the effort of showing up with said hair; the hours spent at a shop or a kitchen stool; the time it took to learn how to properly care for our hair; and the cost associated with the chosen style?

This “absence of struggle” seems to lift an enormous weight from our shoulders and leave us simply with the residue of a genuine acknowledgment. When another Black woman tells me my hair is beautiful, I know she says so with context and a deep, unspoken understanding.

Dr. Griffin drew from her personal experiences as well as her academic background as she parsed through the intangibility of Black affirmation. “When I tell a Black woman, ‘You are beautiful,’ I mean the essence of who they are. I might say, ‘You're beautiful and those eyeglasses are so cute,’ but I also mean the inside stuff inside—‘I value you.’”

The Emotional Benefit of Feeling Affirmed

Much like that of the Black woman affirming my bravery fifteen years ago at a random temp assignment, these brief affirming moments tend to linger in our memory. I spoke with Kirk Baltimore, LMSW a psychotherapist in the Washington Metropolitan Area (DMV), to tap into the psycho-emotional impact of these seemingly ephemeral exchanges.

“Culturally speaking, norms and ideals, as beautiful as they are, can also be perceived as a standard. And depending on the individual, this may induce anxiety,” said Baltimore, “That is, on a micro level, the constant pressures of fitting into the mold of their society can eventually lead to low self-esteem and self-confidence.”

This taps into something that reaches beyond the feeling of living, working, or learning in white spaces. The reach of white standards can impact us, even when we are walking through some of the Blackest neighborhoods in America.

Still, the media — television, movies, advertisements, and social media — still normalizes whiteness and others everything else. Most of us couldn’t even imagine existing in a world that invaribly affirms Blackness. These micro-cuts are instantly healed when we take, even a moment to tell one another that we are beautiful, brave, smart, sharp and good.

"Just passing by, a gorgeous Black woman with locs said, ‘I love your hair!" I looked at her locs and said, ‘And I love yours!’ We smiled at each other as we went about our day; had me out here glowing."

Lizz, Miami, Florida

The Delicate Balance Between Love and Pain

There is an important and distinctive difference in the way we engage with each other across genders, especially as we pass each other on a sidewalk or in a grocery store. The nuances of Black men speaking to women they don’t know, particularly after the table-shaking work of Tatyana Falalizadeh, the Brooklyn-based artist who underlined the issue of street harassment in her 2012 poster campaign, Stop Telling Women to Smile.

Her work, which included the stoic faces of women of color and statements like, ‘my name is not Baby,’ called out the practice of objectifying women on the street.

Falaizadeh spoke to The Guardian shortly after her campaign launched and expressed her intention for the series. “I started this wanting to tell my story but it’s kind of grown into me wanting to tell the story of other women so that we can kind of have our faces there with our voices and make us human and not just sexual objects.” The campaign fueled new understanding about the nuances of engaging with each other, the importance of tact, and the difference between being seen and being looked at.

Dr. Griffin spoke to this thin line, specifically across cis-hetero gender dynamics in the Black community, “Typically when we're talking about heterosexual, cis-gender, Black man and Black women interacting the difference is what whether or not that man wants something. Does he want to impose in my personal space without permission,” she explained, “The moment I feel uncomfortable with a compliment being given across gender dynamics in the Black community is when I feel like the Black man offering the compliment wants something in return.”

"As the men jogged by one by one, they all offered these sweet compliments that I wasn't expecting at all. I'm not vain enough to believe people notice me or even care. We all have our heads buried in our phones and in our individual lives so to be complimented made me smile like a little schoolgirl. This happened maybe five years ago and I STILL think about it from time to time.”"

Shenequa, Queens, New York

The feeling must be rooted in love and empowerment, not possession or control. In any instance, and between any gender across the spectrum, this intention is immediately recognized by tone and body language. Black women want to be seen by Black men, but without feeling forced to engage to protect our safety. This, too, is revolutionary love.

Without Love, There is No Liberation

As casual as these moments feel, even when they move us to feelings of acceptance and joy, the impact of sharing this kind of love reaches far beyond the superficial impact on self-esteem. Collectively, this is how we heal.

Baltimore dove further into the concept of self-esteem within the Black experience. “I don’t believe that many Black folks have had the privilege to accumulate self-esteem as we understand it based on just the norms and ideals of their culture,” he said, “Instead, self-esteem has been assembled based on what imperialistic paragons have been bestowed upon Black folks. He explained that this misappropriation of Black value, both by the world at large and within our communities, makes it difficult to pinpoint how self-esteem impacts the collective.

Sure, it feels good to receive a genuine compliment, and it’s particularly adoring when that compliment comes without the context of race, sexuality, or transaction. But for us, for Black folks, it also kind of feels revolutionary.

"I was walking from the dentist and a group of Black girls drove past, beeped, and yelled how good I looked in orange. I ended up seeing them at CVS and they screamed, 'Look it’s her in her orange,' and we laughed and hugged. Definitely a mood booster!"

DeMicia Inman, Los Angeles, California

The late feminist author, bell hooks explored love in the context of community and positioned our ability to be loving toward one another as a tool of liberation. In her collection of essays published in 2000, All About Love: New Visions, she wrote, "Love should be at the heart of our community efforts, inspiring us to come together to fight systemic oppression and inequality."

hook’s statements about the radical notion that love — both self-love and community love — can lead to liberation laid the groundwork for the emerging movement of pleasure activism. Coined by writer adrienne maree brown in her book, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, she highlights the detrimental importance of joy and pleasure in the work of activism and daily existence in the Black community. “We need to learn how to practice love such that care—for ourselves and others—is understood as political resistance and cultivating resilience,” brown writes.

The notion of pleasure as a central necessity to freedom is not new and stretches back to the earlier works Audre Lorde and Octavia Butler and as recent as author Ebonyjanice’s 2023 book, All the Black Girls Are Activists. The collective work of writers and social changemakers can be studied and re-examined for a deeper understanding of the historical, cultural, and psychologic context of what it means to say to someone you happen upon, “Sis, I love that jacket on you,” or “Oooh, those Jordans are clean my man.”

But, in short, it comes down to one undeniably vital truth. When we see us and take a moment to engage in sharing a brief exchange of love and affirmation, it has an impact that reaches far beyond the moment. Our ancestors didn’t just want us to continue to exist, they wanted us to love.

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