The time left in a soccer game rapidly counted down as Jake Sicaidi (10) hurried to make a throw-in. His summer pre-season at a new school, with a new team, had almost come to a close, and the adrenaline running through his veins blocked out all distractions from the cheering peers and parents on the sidelines, the beating sun, and the timer running out.

Then it happened.

All it took to break that focus was one quiet word from a player on the opposing team.

“This guy out of nowhere just called me the N-word under his breath,” Sicaidi said. “I was like, ‘What did you say?’ And he said it again.”

Sicidi moved to Colorado when he was younger from Chingola, Zambia. While he has come to love the beauty of Colorado landscapes, he has noticed ignorance unlike anything he experienced in Zambia–specifically with a word he never heard white Africans use.

In Louisville, however, he says the word is everywhere.

“I hear it get passed around like it’s just slang,” he said. “At this point, it’s just a word. I don’t know what I should do when I hear it. I don’t know if I should snap.”

He feels American society has desensitized a word that holds an expansive and devastating history, which has led to many of the white students in high school fail to recognize the impact of using it. He has experienced that impact first hand, in both sports and school.

“If I hear it during a game, and I’m having a great game, it kind of drops my confidence down and makes me think about why would they tell me that,” Sicaidi said.

Sicaidi has heard the word more frequently amongst groups of people in Colorado since his move from Zambia, where the attitude towards racial slurs was entirely different.

“They’re just normal. They don’t say that word. They are just people who act normal,”

Though the damage of the word is felt by Sicadi, he tries his hardest to stand up to those who use it to tear others down, or to claim it as their own while ignoring it’s history–and he encourages his community and his friends to do the same.

“I feel it’s happened to them a lot, that they hear it so much, that they just, at this point, forget about it and don’t even care,” Sicaidi said. “But still, you have to stand up for yourself and tell somebody. You need to find somebody you can talk to who would actually do something about it.”

Sitting in freshman language arts, Stormi Ogbuji (10) sat and watched as the other students in her class sat and drew on their desks, played with their hair, and pretended to read and do their schoolwork.

As she minded her own business, focused solely on the assigned book she was reading, she was interrupted.

“Some kid said to me,‘Do you even understand this?’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean do I even understand this?’ And he was like, ‘Well, you know, you just, like, don’t have the same ideas.’” Ogbuji said.

In this moment, she felt belittled. This wasn’t just a one-off incident—Ogbuji has felt out of place at school her entire life.

In classrooms where kids should only have to worry about paying attention and learning, she’s constantly felt like a target.

“Before we start reading a book that has the N-word in it, teachers will be like, ‘So there’s going to be some words in here that I think you all know we aren’t supposed to use.’” Ogbuji said. “And it just feels like everyone’s staring at me, even though they’re not actually staring at me.”

This sense of isolation doesn’t only affect Ogbuji when she’s at school. She has also found it hard to fit in with her friends due to the color of her skin.

“When I’m at hangouts with my friends, and this is definitely not something that seems like a really big deal, but there’s little things,” Ogbuji said. “All my friends are doing each other’s hair or something, and it just feels a little bit isolating because there’s a lot of stuff that I don’t relate to with them and that they also don’t relate to with me. And that feels kind of hard.”

Having a white mom and a black dad leaves her often feeling like she’s at war with her identity. She says she finds it hard to balance both sides of herself while also trying to fit in.

“I think it’s kind of isolating” Ogbuji said. “I think it’s just really hard to find ways to feel like I’m fitting in, but also not like shunning my culture and not really expressing myself, I guess.”

She has even felt judgment towards her family as people are very quick to make assumptions.

“I’ve actually been asked before when I was with my mom, if I was actually her child,” Ogbuji said

When it comes to the N word, Ogbuji has often felt powerless, even around the people she feels close to.

“Some of my really close friends will just say it around me or call someone else that. I don’t think anyone ever is stupid enough to call me that. But one of my friends will just say it around me, and it’s just really off-putting,”

She feels strongly that it is a useless word with a horrible history behind it, which she hopes people could understand as she is sick of trying to defend it.

“I just wish that I could tell people how much it actually does affect people,” she said. “I guess because I think that they think it’s just a word. And I’m sure they think it’s just a word, too. But if they actually understood the true meaning and background behind it, then I think they would.

“It just makes me feel like I don’t have a place in the community at Monarch.”