As you prepare to possibly have holiday dinners with white people, as you mentally start preparing to be back in your white serving institution, and as you prepare yourself for the new year and the bolder version of yourself, here is my list of reminders...
Some days whiteness will make you forget that your mom is brilliant and strong, because of the accent in her tongue and her cultural differences. Some days whiteness will make you forget that you dad is hard working and resilient, because they say that if you work hard you can “make it,” and he has not “made it.” Some days whiteness will make you forget that you are beautiful and capable of anything, because of the barrio you come from and the clothes you wear.
Some days whiteness will make you forget that you are smart and worthy, because you stutter when you have to speak English in front of people you don’t know. Some days whiteness will make you forget that our music is an important contribution to society, instead they’ll call it “exotic,” and their “sexy latin night.”
Some days whiteness will make you forget that your abuela is sharp and witty, because of how she upholds your cultura’s various religions. Some days whiteness will make you forget that your tias are funny and use humor to deal with their oppression - instead they call them loud and ask them to leave restaurants.
Some days whiteness will you make you feel like you are not good enough to go to their schools, like the job you have is charity, and like your logic is not good enough. They will question everything when you begin to thrive, and we have to just learn to not let them take us out.
Remember that we have been outshining and outliving ALL for some time now and they have consistently managed to ridicule it. Now we are showing them what all this indigenous [diaspora] excellence looks like in their institutions, and they will try to make us forget who we are.
Some days whiteness will make you forget that you are the sum of generational resistance.
You are the sun, the moons, and the stars.
They just tried to make us forget by coercing us into corners, and giving us positions with fake titles, and chairs with no power nor influence nor voice. But we are no longer satisfied by these fraudulent attempts of keeping us at bay. We are no longer satisfied with being lied to, we can see right through it all.
But some days whiteness will still try to make you forget what they have done to us. In order to move forward, we must remember the years of evidence and national traumas in our home countries that show us otherwise. Remember Chiquita bananas, the Panama Canal, international trade policies (NAFTA), the border walls, the syphilis experiments, and forced sterilizations. Remember who continually has done nothing but enjoys the benefits that their whiteness affords them. Remember who is trying to make you question yourself, remember who benefits when they clip your wings. Remember that our countries will never be lands of opportunities because they robbed us of that.
Some days whiteness makes me feel inferior, dumb, and it makes me question my own spiritual and outer beauty, and I have to remind myself that brownness has always been brilliant and beautiful. I remind myself that the rest is a lie, told by powerful [white] people, meant to people like me down, quiet, and docile.
Remember, for all of us, and hold strong and steadfast - we got this.