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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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.