Kamari Howard 

31 March 2017 

Comm 160 

March Blog Post

For this months blog post, I decided to focus on a quote from a more recent read. The article Im going to focus on is Family Bullies by Keith Berry and Tony E. Adams. This particular article analyzes bullying in families, and it really hit home with me because this occurs in my family quite frequently. There was not really a particular quote that stood out to me in this article,  however, a personal narrative that they shared really resonated with me and connected with me. The title of this narrative is Bully Cousin and it explains how Tony and Danny who were cousins would always fight, and ultimately Danny would bully Tony because of his sexual preferences. 

I grew up as the baby of the family, until my two cousins were born. Growing up, I was the only child so having people to play with was exciting to me. When they got older, everybody would always pick on me because they thought I was not “black enough” or I always talked properly whenever I would converse with someone. As a young child, this hurt me especially because I was proud to be a Black woman and my family discrediting me of my “blackness” did not sit well with me. In similarity to this story, I was picked on because I was different from everyone else. Like Tony explained in his personal narrative, he would hope that other relatives would intervene and call out Danny for picking on him, but they would rarely do anything. This occurred with me as well, because I would look to my older aunts and uncles to help me out with the situation and tell my cousins that what they are doing is not okay, but they would just laugh along with everyone else. The only person that really had my back was my mom, because she would also get teased for the same thing. 

As I got older, I realized that family bullying is real and it was something that needed to be talked about. Fortunately as I got older, the bullying stopped and my family realized that what they were doing was wrong. In Tony’s situation, he was trying to stay away from Danny as much as possible even when they got older. They have casual conversation, but nothing intimate as most cousins would have. I am happy to say that I have moved past this with my family and we are able to communicate with each other in a healthy manner. Dealing with this as a young child carried on with me as a young adult, but I learned to love myself for who I am and to not let anyone, even my family take my blackness away from me.