Black History Month, Through My Own Lens

In South Africa, I am not racially classified as Black.

I am a Coloured woman, a race and culture with its own complex identity, history, and heritage. Many of us are deeply mixed, like I am. Our identity is layered, shaped by Indigenous, African, European, and Asian ancestry. It carries its own language, humour, traditions, and rhythm.

That distinction matters.

Growing up during the tail end of Apartheid, race was structured and legislated. Spaces were designed and segregated along racial lines. You entered environments knowing who you would see reflected back at you, not by accident, but by design. It was psychological architecture as much as it was physical.

You entered those spaces knowing your race was largely who you would see. The system imprinted that predictability into generations.

As I grew older, things changed.

South Africa changed. Laws shifted. Representation expanded. The country began the slow and imperfect process of undoing what had been deliberately built. The imprint of that system still exists in economics, geography, opportunity, and memory, but the country evolved.

And in my lived experience, something softened.

I was not constantly measuring myself against structures. I was not entering rooms leading with race. I was not calibrating how I would be perceived.

I was just me. A girl. A young woman. A woman with dreams and aspirations.

I had ambitions, opinions, and goals. I entered spaces as myself, not as a stereotype and not as a representative of anything other than my own becoming.

Then I moved. First to England.

For the first time, I felt my skin colour projected back at me in subtle ways I had never truly experienced before. Nothing loud. Nothing explicit. Just small moments that made me aware that I was being read before I had spoken. It was subtle, but it was new.

Then I moved to Canada.

I arrived intrigued, excited, and curious. Yet the subtlety of being Black felt even more present. I felt it in meetings, in professional spaces, and in everyday interactions. For the first time in my life, I genuinely felt like the minority.

I remember attending my first Black History Month event in Canada, the Toronto Black Film Festival. A South African film was making its debut, and I was proud and happy to support it.

But watching a South African film outside of South Africa felt different. At home, those stories are layered, complex, and lived. In Toronto, that same story felt contextualized, framed, and observed.

I was watching my country through the lens of diaspora. It was strange and deeply inspiring. In that moment, I realized something important.

As I moved further into professional environments, I began to understand that visibility and understanding are not the same thing. Being seen can sometimes mean being interpreted.

I became more mindful of how I present myself, how confidence is delivered, and how directness is received. The stereotype of the “angry Black woman” is not loud. It is subtle. It shows up in tone policing, in how assertiveness can be labeled as attitude, and in how strength can be misread as edge.

That awareness changes you.

Not because you are unsure of who you are. But because you are aware of how you might be perceived.

Black History Month was not something we celebrated growing up in South Africa. It was not significant in the way it is here in Canada. Our history carried its own complexity, and race was framed differently.

So when I moved here, Black History Month felt unfamiliar.

But I am learning. Learning why it matters in this context. Why intentional recognition is important in a country shaped by immigration and layered histories. Why making space for stories, especially those historically overlooked, carries weight. And as I learn, one thing is clear.

I am proud. Proud of being Black in the diaspora sense. Proud of being Coloured in the South African sense. Proud of the layered identity that shaped me.

And proud of simply being me. Jen….Jeanettia.

A woman shaped by multiple countries. By history. By complexity. By growth.

I do not enter spaces leading with my race. But I value the spaces that allow me to enter as myself.

The rooms that do not require calibration. The rooms that do not mistake confidence for attitude. The rooms where I do not have to shrink or pre-empt perception.

Maybe being seen is not about changing who we are. Maybe it is about finding, and creating, spaces that recognize who we have always been. And maybe that is the clarity I carry now.