I wanted to talk more about my experiences as a biracial black person in America and offer some reflection on where portions of my family went wrong in teaching us about our identity. I've talked about my background a lot. My mother is a white identified Cuban and my father is black from the south side of Chicago. My mother went wrong in a lot of ways, but particularly in her failure to understand or educate herself about race. As an adult, I understood it as, she never needed to. She had the privilege not to. For me, I never had a choice. We would talk about race and she'd talk at me sideways, or around it; she never needed to acknowledge race, but I always did. It didn't matter to anyone that I had a white mother and nobody ever asked; my mother educated me less. She preferred for my siblings and I to live in a bubble, but when we lived in Chicago or South Florida, that bubble bursted. Race, and that lack of true teaching, followed me for many years. In elementary school, I struggled with identity issues. I wondered why I didn't "fit" in. I was smart, almost too smart you could say. My thoughts were fully formed like an adults, so I could never just "be." I was always wondering why I was different, always carrying that on my back. As a child, I looked around me and saw that black people were treated differently. I didn't have to be taught that; I experienced that. This struggle to fit in was exacerbated when I tested into the gifted program. My 3rd grade teacher --- a black woman --- saw my potential and I'd never felt more seen and heard, but in 4th grade, I was targeted by my peers and alone. There weren't a lot of black kids in gifted and they isolated us a lot from other children. I started to think that I had to go to a school for people like me, and that lead me to Herbert A Ammons Middle school, an IB Magnet school that taught me everything I'd come to know about the world. You see, Ammons was 20 miles away and filled with wealthy white kids. I suddenly became aware of the fact that I was a black, poor kid and I didn't want them to know. My father was sick at the time, but always educated me about who I was and where I came from. One time, my father showed up with my baby brother to my honors society induction. I was a top performing student and his support meant everything to me, but I remember them looking at my dad, then me, then my dad, then me. Silence. They said he looked scary, imposing, rough around the edges, but my dad was gentle, supportive, funny, and kind. I didn't understand at the time that my peers were scared of him because he was black. I didn't understand my apprehension and fear around these wealthy white kids from the suburbs was because I was taught to believe that they were more important than me because of the structured, systematic racist system that we live in. At Ammons, I encountered some of my closest friends. However, these nice white kids never understood that racism isn't just being nice to black people, it's not treating them with microagressions and subtle, insidious comments. It's the understanding that some things --- intentional or not --- are incredibly hurtful. I had friends comment on my hair, saying I was so smart...for a black girl, was I adopted because my mom looks white, and what's it like in the hood. My best white friend even introduced herself by saying she'd never met a black person before. These comments, while "innocent" are the systemic, hurtful, subtle, "polite" racism that people need to get uncomfortable about, because that's the racism that we have no choice but to endure. A friend of mine wore a confederate flag bracelet and didn't know why it was wrong. It was very hurtful and I was quiet about it. I won't be quiet any longer. It's time to reclaim our voices, enter spaces, and challenge the system. We can do it, I believe it. Remember always that #BlackLivesMatter.
