> When you are a minority in a group, I think you tend to overthink things, feel very judged, and may be put in to an uncomfortable position to speak for your community.
Because people tend to generalize and if you represent 50% of the experience they have with that minority it's very easy to label everything, especially negative aspects, as generally applicable to "all of them". So you bear the burden of representing your whole minority to the best of your ability. Members of the majority rarely need to do this or even be aware of this.
So the feeling of being judged may be an internal feeling that does not match reality.
I'm not sure what the answer is to that but I say just be you. You are where you are, hopefully, because of the person you have become and that is something that you should be proud of and be able to act on.
You can also look at it as that you have already been judged in a positive light in order to be in the place that you are.
Many people who are members of a minority group feel pressure to do everything "perfectly" because people will naturally use them as a reference for the whole minority group. That's just how human brains are wired - we use patterns that we observe to predict the future. If we don't have much data, we form crude stereotypes.
It takes active effort and learning from people like you and I to help overcome those biases so that members of minority groups aren't exposed to this pressure and can feel safe in making mistakes (or at least, as safe as members of the majority feel).
In general, if you don't know what you're talking about (at least you were honest about it), it's best to do some more learning rather than to add noise to the thread. I'm not claiming that I know much here, but I know enough to know that a solution like "just be you" is not going to be helpful here.
The majority of people of African decent alive today have either lived through, or have parents/grand-parents that lived through the civil-rights movements(US)/decolonisation(Africa).
Some have lived without the right to speak their native language, to go to the school of their choosing, to vote, or had to give up their seat to a white person if the bus was getting full, considered second class citizen in their own land. So they either experienced it, and/or heard stories of how only the color of their skin stripped them of what we would consider basic rights, and the pain it caused people they know and love. Some (until 1990) have been born a crime[0] for being "mixed race".
You may think it's history but for many alive today it's their life story. And what I mentioned is but a small part of it, and I'm only talking about people of African decent. Had she lived 3 more years, Rosa Parks would have been able to see Barack Obama becoming president. And today, some get gentle[1] reminders[2] that they don't belong here[3], or just get threatened[4].
When you have more people, it gives everyone more data points to separate the individual from the group.
But when you are a single data point that represents a group, any personal characteristic can be easily construed/extrapolated as a characteristic of the group you are supposed to represent.
This leads to the feeling of "Am I being judged for myself or for my group?". This cuts for both the good and the bad stereotyping that your group might have.
why do you feel judged?