I refuse to be another statistic by Kennedy

I refuse to be another statistic by Kennedy - January 2026 Scholarship Essay

I Refuse to Be Another Statistic

For most of my life, I wanted nothing more than to be liked by everyone. My name is Kennedy Jones, and I am a 17-year-old from Ruston, Louisiana, where I live with my mom and grandma. Growing up, I believed everything people told me—about who I was, who I should be, and what made someone worthy. I measured my value through other people’s opinions, never stopping to question whether those opinions were fair or true. It wasn’t until recently that I realized how much power I had given away.

Every morning at 7:20, I left my grandma’s house for the 13-minute drive to school. To me, school felt less like a place of learning and more like a stage where insecurity disguised itself as cruelty. Girls masked their own self-doubt by tearing others down, and I became an easy target. At the time, I didn’t understand that their judgment had nothing to do with me. I let it define me. I let it shrink me. I grew up wishing I were someone else—someone prettier, louder, more likable. Someone who didn’t feel like they were always falling short.

Walking through the halls felt like a constant comparison I could never win. Every glance made me question myself. Beauty seemed to belong to every girl at my school except me. I began to wonder if the problem wasn’t just how I looked, but who I was. I was either considered “too white” for the Black kids or “not Black enough” for everyone else. Being called “whitewashed” was meant as a joke, but it stayed with me. It made me feel like I had to apologize for how I spoke, how I dressed, or for simply being myself. I was made to feel as if having proper manners or listening to Taylor Swift somehow made me less deserving of my identity.

Over time, that pressure became unbearable. I started believing that my insecurities controlled me, stealing my desire to be seen or loved. I felt like a lost soul—alive in body, but empty in spirit. My mental health deteriorated quietly, until my mom began noticing the signs. She heard me crying at night, choking back tears, wishing I looked like the girls I saw on Instagram—tiny, pale, crowned with golden hair. I convinced myself that if I looked like them, I would finally belong.

One night, my mom asked me a question that stopped me cold: “Why don’t you believe that being Black is beautiful?” I tried to answer carefully, but the truth spilled out before I could soften it. I told her I didn’t feel beautiful because I didn’t fit in. As a Black girl, I felt invisible. Saying it out loud made me realize how far I had drifted from myself. I had started skipping meals, losing sleep, and praying at night for God to make my skin white. In trying to become someone else, I had lost who I was.

Eventually, I found myself sitting in a therapist’s office, struggling to believe her when she told me I was beautiful. For a brief moment, I did believe her—until I opened TikTok. My screen filled with the same image over and over again: petite white girls with flawless skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. There was no diversity. No one who looked like me.

One day, my therapist asked to see my phone. I handed it to her as she scrolled quietly before looking up and saying, “This isn’t real. Makeup. Filters. Edits. Why do you only see white girls?” Without thinking, I answered honestly: “Because that’s who I want to be. People already say I talk like a white girl, so I might as well live like one. I hate being Black. I think it’s ugly.”

She leaned in—soft, but firm—and said, “Don’t talk to yourself like that. You’re lucky to be who you are. You have the kind of natural brown skin people search for in beauty aisles, trying to buy what you were born with.”

That moment didn’t fix everything, but it cracked something open inside me. For the first time, I questioned the beliefs I had accepted without resistance. I realized my strength wasn’t confidence—it was courage. The courage to challenge the standards that told me my Blackness was something to escape instead of something to embrace.

Since that day, I’ve begun unlearning the lies I was taught about beauty and worth. I’m more intentional about what I consume online and more aware of how I speak to myself. When negative thoughts arise, I no longer accept them as truth. I remind myself that my identity is not a flaw—it is a foundation. I’ve started carrying myself with greater self-respect, not because I suddenly feel perfect, but because I finally believe I deserve kindness, especially from myself.

That conversation planted a seed. It taught me that growth doesn’t come from changing who you are to fit into a smaller world—it comes from recognizing your value even when the world refuses to. I no longer strive to disappear into someone else’s image. Instead, I am learning to stand fully as myself, refusing to be another statistic shaped by insecurity and self-doubt. I am discovering that my strength lies in my ability to question, to heal, and to define beauty on my own terms.