For rent..but not to me.
Charles Hicks,
Silver Spring, MD.
Race doesn’t define your success path
Marvin Guevara,
Silver Spring, MD
Don’t ever look down on someone because you might end up looking up to them!
I wish he was a girl.
Kristen Moorhead,
Silver Spring, MD.
I’ve always told my son, “You can be anything you want to be.” Before Shani Davis’ won gold, POTUS was elected – prior to Neil deGrasse Tyson gracing our screen in Cosmos. What was once – is still – momentous to me is his normal: ‘I like ice skating, why not? The President’s black – and? Of course African Americans do astrophysics!’
Initially it was comical: trying to impart the earth-shattering significance of things he finds hopelessly mundane. Laying the groundwork for ‘the dream’ was hard, I guess living it is easy.
He’s twelve now – almost my height and swears he ‘doesn’t see color.’ His possibilities are infinite, yes, but there’s a cruel catch: “You can be anything you want to be, but first, you must survive. And your survival is dependent on knowing this: you are young, black, male – perceived guilty until proven innocent, aggressive, ‘a demon,’ America’s prime suspect. We all bear the burden of knowing the procedures and pathology that come with that.”
Identity isn’t housed in a box
Karen Than Myaing
Silver Spring, MD
In this photo: what do you get when you mix an Israeli, a Trinidadian, a Jamaican, a Caucasian, a Burmese and an African American? Our beautiful family. We are Jews, Muslim, Christian and Buddhist. We are female. We are male. We are children. We are human. We do not belong in a box for your comfort. Get used it!
I bet you darken in sun.
Olivia Devereux,
Silver Spring, MD
I’m white. Light skinned white. Black people think I’m passing. I was raised by a Black woman and come across that way even though I am really white. It makes me uncomfortable, like cultural appropriation.
Latkes or lumpia- beautiful Hapa struggle
Ann Hirschhorn,
Silver Spring, MD.
My parents grew up in a time where interracial couples were criticized for diluting the race of their children. My father expressed a fear that because I was of a mixed race background, I might not feel that there was a culture or place where I belonged. My mother grew up in the Philippines, within a culture where whiteness was prized and being mestiza was preferable to being a full Filipino. Because of this I grew up constantly being told how lucky I was to be mixed, to have the best of both worlds, to have experiences in both cultures. They bought me books like “Who am I?” and reflected to me a narrative of my life where I got to experience things much more interesting and diverse than my peers. I believed it made me special. But then, there were the times that I also felt that I didn’t belong. The only Filipino in Hebrew school, B’nai brith, to have a bat mitzvah. Using Filipino words for private parts and bathroom talk avoided the possibility that I use a “bathroom word” that anyone would recognize at the wrong time.
It also led to a lot of confusion when I didn’t know the same potty words as everyone else. (I didn’t know what an armpit was until 4th grade!) With my mother’s family when Taglish and kapampangan words were thrown around with the assumption that I would know and recognize them. Feeling stupid or not Filipino enough when I didn’t know what they said or how to respond. Being biracial has meant for me that I was often confused in a place where I was supposed to feel at home. It meant being both and insider and an outsider in two very different worlds. It did also mean, that I got to experience some of the best of both of those worlds. I got to feel a part of both the Filipino, Jewish and American narrative. Holding inside of me a place where all those things could intersect. Living with cultural conflicts in my home gave me the ability to think critically and to take ownership of my worldview. By virtue of having two, often opposing views, in one family, in one home, I learned that there were many ways to understand myself and the world. I do feel profoundly lucky to have the experiences that I have of being Filipino, white, Jewish, mestiza, mixed, hapa. But it was important to me to own both the beauty and the struggle.
We’ve got a new lawyer now
David Rotenstein,
Silver Spring, MD.
Africville was a community of African Canadians on Bedford Bay in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was settled in the early 1800s by former American slaves who went to Canada as Black Loyalists and as slaves during the American Revolution and War of 1812. After decades of neglect by the city of Halifax, Africville’s homes were razed and its residents displaced into public housing projects elsewhere in Halifax. In the 1990s the former residents and their heirs sued for reparations. After achieving a small settlement – a park was created in the former community, an apology issued, and a museum was built – Africville’s people still wanted to be made whole. My six words, told to me in 2016 by one of the former residents, captures the hope and despair of people in communities throughout the Americas whose lives and livelihoods were destroyed by environmental racism and greed.
Keep loving people without ethnicity
Dora Stephani R. Gonsalves,
Silver Spring, MD
Ethnicity never describe anyone that how he/she is!
Racism can make a separation between a human. Sometimes it really affects people as badly.
Puerto Rico’s Identity Crisis Defines Me.
Isabel Nicole Otero Hernandez,
Silver Spring, MD.
I was born in Puerto Rico to a Cuban Mother and a Puerto Rican Father. The summer I turned 10 my family moved to Jacksonville, FL, and only a year later moved again to a small town to the north: Ringgold, Georgia. When people ask me where I am from, I usually laugh and tell them I have a huge identity crisis, but if what they’re looking for is a label that I am a Southern Cuba Rican –or something along those lines.
I often explain that it’s hard to be from three places at once. I know nothing of Cuba except what I read and research, or from the stories I hear from mostly Bautista-fan family expats. I know some about Puerto Rico because I took some of the culture with me. The picture I’ve shared is that of my family members currently in the states. We all seem to leave behind the island we love, and the place where we feel at home, for the stability and economic freedom that comes from living in a place like Red State Georgia. I know enough about the South to feel as though it’s almost home. I often find myself calling people classists and elitists when they criticize and generalize my beloved South, but almost as many times I find myself cringing at the news on TV describing the politics and culture of the South.
When I heard about this project, I instant thought it was an interesting exercise. I found myself one morning at my work computer writing the first 6 words that came to my mind. “Puerto Rico’s identity crisis defines me” just flowed out from my fingertips, and I thought it was worth sharing. To me, Puerto Rico has an identity crisis. I feel like I can credibly criticize and protect it because I have the odd dual identity of someone who is fully bilingual, feels fully Puerto Rican, but also feels fully American and very much Southern. The pride I feel in both my countries and both my regions leads to a lot of disappointment in both and a lot of excitement to visit them both. I find myself fascinated by Puerto Rican culture and Southern culture because my perspective gives me insight into those things that I find people don’t notice very easily. For example, I’ll go back to the South and feel at home only to hear, “You know you only got into the University of Georgia because you’re Hispanic.” All of the sudden, a Southern white woman who is like a second mother to me distills my identity to fit her reality. I suddenly feel like an outsider. Or I go to Puerto Rico for my grandmother’s funeral, and get annoyed at the overt symbols of Latino Machismo – if one more person referred to god as “Papa Dios” I was going to lose it and finish with a feminist rant. It’s been interesting to feel like I’ve grown up in limbo, and I thought I’d share my thoughts with you. I love NPR, and I hope you enjoy my story.
Thank you,
Isabel Otero
I awaken further to the pain
Kenzie Raulin,
Silver Spring, MD.
It gets harder and harder to awaken to the pain caused by ‘white’ folks, out of ignorance, pain, greed. It’s not our fault, but I do feel it’s our responsibility to help change the world.
Black albino women challenges racial expectations
Brandi,
Silver Spring, MD.
I’m a black woman with albinism. That has been both intriguing and confusing to people. Some people inquire about it and some make ignorant comments. I challenge the white-black dichotomy because I’m black but have white skin. I happily embrace both of my identities as black and as a woman with albinism. That has caused me to live on the margins but I celebrate my complex position.
Oreo: Black outside, white inside
Lauren,
Silver Spring, MD.
This was a term that was often used to describe me during my middle school days, it always hurtful to hear that people thought that because I was smart and took pride in my education it made me somehow less black.
I blend in, wherever I go.
Brenda Footer
Silver Spring, MD
I live in a very diverse neighborhood, where many El Salvadoran and Dominican families live. People are always trying to speak to me in Spanish, because I have olive skin and dark hair. I’m as white as can be, but it’s always been this way. Italians assume I’m Italian, Latinos assume I’m Latin. Arabs assume I’m Arab, Jews know I’m a Jew. I went to a predominantly black college, and there I was always told, “You don’t talk like a white girl, are Spanish?”
