DON’T JUDGE ME!

People are much deeper than stereotypes. That’s the first place our minds go. Then you get to know them and you hear their stories, and you say, ‘I’d have never guessed.’

Carson Kressley

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I am a woman of God, a mother to a beautiful 11 year old, an art teacher, an American, and I’m black.

I listed those characteristics in a specific order with reason. This is how I identify myself. However, this is not the order most would identify me as. Most of the time, the gut reaction is “she’s black.”

Living in America is all I’ve known. I’ve traveled primarily on the east coast and visited the Bahamas. Although I haven’t been to too many places, my life has been an interesting journey. I’m 30 years old, and there’s so much I haven’t seen or experienced. However, I’ve learned a lot.

I learned a long time ago that when I hear or sense hate, that hate is birthed from fear or ignorance. Therefore, that fear or ignorance never strongly affected me. This umbrellas racism, girl-on-girl hate, etc. From there, I learned to speak to people with an understanding and an open mind. I found myself loving people more and communicating more. I began to see past ugliness and learned to ask the right questions to connect and understand people better.

Another thing I learned is the obvious: I have one body…one life. But when I began to actually live and think that way, my decision-making changed, and I started walking with wisdom. I realized that I don’t get second chances, and neither do my friends and family. I started speaking from the heart all the time and saying “I’m sorry” when I knew I was wrong. I started allowing people to correct me and started asking for help. I also began to truly love. When I said it, I meant it with every breath I took.

One of the most important things I figured out while being an American and having the freedom to worship Christ is that Christ is so very much alive. Once I figured this out, I did not become perfect. After all, I am only human. But it gave me reason for living, and I mean really, truly living. I smiled when I could, laughed hard when I heard funny things, and cried when there was no other emotion I could muster up. Understanding His sacrifice for me put everything into perspective.

Being a black woman in America was never my headline. I know that I’m black. I’ve never seen myself in any other color, nor have I wanted to be anything different. However, that’s not all that I am. Hence the reason why I wrote it last.

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1-01

I’ve lived my life in silence…

When I was sixteen and a middle-aged, overly friendly neighborhood police officer asked me on a “date,” I stayed silent. Every night my mom got a text from a friend about raids going on in our neighborhood, I stayed silent. When the brothers and sisters in the congregation discussed how much (or rather, how little) we as Christians ought to help “those illegals” whilst shoving potato salad into our mouths during a church potluck, I stayed silent. Every time a lazy coworker leaned on the counter in the break room, cigarette in hand, telling us how we were taking his job and then asking us to take his shift on our days off so he could go party, I stayed silent.

I’ve lived my life in fear...

Fear of letting anyone know my secret.

Fear of people knowing, and what they could do with that knowledge.

Fear of what would happen if I were found and indefinitely detained by INS, deported, kept from my son, sent back with nothing to a country I last saw at age eleven.

I’ve lived my life in lies…

I’ve done what I had to do to care for my kids, including flipping burgers, waiting tables, washing dishes, cleaning houses, working as a hospice caregiver (CNA), and far too many other jobs that screwed me out of pay for me to name them all. In order to have the most coveted all-American jobs, I often had to lie about my legal status, my origin, and even my nationality. Once I had a job where they thought I was American, and hiding my accent became a matter of survival.

When you live your life as a second class citizen, the joy of doing what you love is but a dream.

I am extremely privileged to have found respite and work doing what I love: art.

I am extremely privileged to be a Dreamer.

In 2011, I met the “right” person—a man who was an American citizen. We married, and the opportunity for residency became available to me. We put it off at the beginning because of how costly and intense the process was. Later, we worried that as a polyamorous couple, INS would see our union as illegitimate.

When I grasped the role that immigration issues have played in my life as a queer woman, I decided to not go through the process of “legalization” at all. Had I fallen in love with an undocumented man or a woman, the story would have been very different. It wasn’t fair. And I could no longer pretend it was. I decided to stay illegal and suffer the same hardships and consequences all my brothers and sister endure in this county. I reject the idea that a piece of paper determines how much of a human I am.

I reject the idea that it is wrong for a human being to move across the Earth over arbitrary lines drawn by governments, which don’t benefit humanity but rather a Capitalist machine that preys on the people that it claims to protect and steals the fruits of their labor, while pointing to Latinos as the problem. We are being used as scapegoats.

At some point the fear began to dissolve and turn into anger. I could compile a list that encompasses everything I as an undocumented Latina have experienced living in the United States for over 13 years, from daily micro-aggressions to downright humiliations, but I won’t.

I cannot.

Thanks to a little wit and a lot of love and support from my community, I’ve come to understand and attempt to Live out My Life in Power. As per Frida’s words: “I think that little by little I will be able to solve my own problems and survive.”

I love my people and my culture and the melding of other Latinx People and their culture with my own, which create the experience and love for one another that we feel together in this country.

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Growing up I didn’t really identify myself as any particular race. My father was black, but we were both lighter skinned; my mother migrated from Ecuador as a child, but I was not taught Spanish. I obviously wasn’t white because of my features and hair, but somehow I wasn’t black enough.

I went to mostly black public elementary school in Prince George’s County, Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC. I do not remember much from that time, but I do remember feeling left out, especially in sports. Once, when I was playing football, the student playing quarterback yelled “move your white ass over into position.” I didn’t fit in, which pushed me to focus on schoolwork and art.

In junior high the student class was a more diverse mix, and so it seemed I fit in a bit more with black children and the white children who “acted black.” During this period I felt more accepted and built confidence in myself and appearance, but I still never felt like I was a particular race. I was simply human.

As a freshman in high school, the experience started to remind me a bit of elementary school, where I was either not considered black or black enough, and where I was ostracized by some. By tenth grade my mother pulled me out of public school, and I was homeschooled for the next year before receiving my diploma. I took a year to work with my father’s plumbing business before attending art school for graphic design.

I spent the first four years of my adult life in the rapidly gentrifying Washington, DC. Working in the arts, most of my peers were white, and my identity of racelessness was comfortable for me. I didn’t think about it much, and therefore was not conscious of the injustices constantly plaguing people of color. I mean, I was black, but not too black to make anyone uncomfortable.

Many times I wish I could have been more aware, to know the things I know today. But these experiences are also what made me who I am today.

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1-03

Three strikes: black, female, gay. Every moment of every day, I strive to be unequivocally me. And what you see is the product. But what you see is simple yet complex and misunderstood by most, depending on the lens you look at me through. But I’m not interested in being understood by the masses, just respected as a human being.  So I live my life for me, and no one else. And I couldn’t be happier. I think back to old me, to how miserable I was when I was living for other people, and I feel pity for her. But now I’ve set myself free, and my happiness is uncompromised.

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Personally, I would not choose to be any other race or sexuality than what I am. As a heterosexual, African-American male, I am in love with myself. I possess flaws, just like everyone else treading this planet. However, after spending my childhood in a public school in northern Virginia, I have learned to not allocate time to worrying about those flaws. I think most people will form their own opinion or judgment of others, regardless of who they are or what they do.

Society has planted the label of “African-American” upon me, but personally I only consider myself American due to my lack of knowledge about the continent of Africa. We are all humans at the end of the day. Humans who should avoid classification due to color or origin. Do what you want to do so that you can be what you want to be. I am different, and I love it. I am a man with a mind permeated with ideas for the next generation hatched from the ones prior to my birth. However, some only see the clothes on my back or the color of my skin.

Misunderstood is my favorite word. I believe it embodies my life and personality in its entirety. If I were to ever be executed or slain, I hope it would be because of how my mind functions and not because of my physical appearance. Everyone is more than what they look like or what lifestyle they adopt. No one is born to hate, but everyone is brought to life to love.

“If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” ~ Mother Teresa

One Comment

  1. Takisha says:

    Love this!

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