My crush told me I looked like a horse

The Animalization of Women of Color

Photo by Israyosoy S. from Pexels

If you would like to buy me a coffee, that would be super nice! Thank you!! https://ko-fi.com/indiadorada

I’m not sure I’d call it a “crush,” but he was definitely the first guy I was ever into.

We were never super close, but we joked around and I thought we had a friendly, casual relationship — at least, that’s what I believed until 2010. That’s when he found an old photo of me when I was eight, hanging out with some of my white friends. Keep in mind, I went to a very white high school, and then he had the nerve to say,

“Look at Sulastri, she looks like a horse with those cheekbones.” I told him to go eat shit, and that was the end of it.

But now, as an adult, I’m just mortified. White people really do have this habit of animalizing people of color, painting us as “aggressive” or “dangerous.”

“Describing groups of people as animals and using language like “hunt them down” or “infestation” is an age-old tactic to influence public opinion. And it works. History shows that when dehumanizing language is repeated, people start to see their fellow…