Argumentative Essay About Being A Ballerina

Image your mom had just signed you up for ballet. You watched all the Barbie movies and practiced the dances, this was your dream. You wanted to dance like the people you see on television the girls in your class talked about dancing at their studios and you could only dream of what it must be like to be a real ballerina. Your mother saves up the money to get you into classes. Imagine your 7 and you go to you first class and meet the girls they don’t look like you at all. You’re too young to pay too much attention to something like that but you make note of it, and you begin to feel out of place. After class with the rest of the money your family had saved up, you go to the store you try to find a nude leotard and shoes, which are required for performances in you class. As you scan the isle and look around the store you start to notice that there isn’t something there for you. There isn’t a Ballerina in sight that looks like you, there isn’t leotard that was made for, you don’t belong, and there isn’t space in this world (or the real one) for someone like you. “Someone like you” meaning dark skin girls who dream of being a ballerina. You look up at your mother and you ask her, “Where are the black ballerinas in the store?” She looks down at you disappointed and is unable to

This class along with other classes have made me realize that I should be unapologetically black. I am beginning to accept that my blackness isn’t a burden, but a lack of privilege. I became very interested in finding out if this is something that people knew happened to people of color. I wanted to know if they didn’t know or they didn’t care because, “when you have privilege equality feels like oppression.” My mission with researching this topic was to one collect data for my personal reference and two to spread