I have been beaten because I'm Indian, I have been kicked because I'm half-black, I've had
my hair burned because I'm not white.
Because you can not not, it's in our water it's in the air that we breathe, it's the
world that we're born into.
You know, in America, you have to have racial categories, everybody wants to know what it
is.
We are the only people who have to carry a card, a plastic card from the government that
says how much Indian we are.
I have the privilege to work on, you know, my internalized racism or not.
I don't have to listen with privilege.
Why do people respond like that?
Let this day go by without you being beaten physically, emotionally, or mentally.
How much do I give up on a day to day basis to fit in?
Women are a bridge, women give birth and we suffer through our children's trials besides
our own.
We try and protect your child, you want to scream because it hurts so bad and you know
it's coming.
I'm tired of it.
I had to dress up as celebrity and look through magazines, but I couldn't find no one that
was Latina, Chicana, Mexicana and I ended up crying and I felt bad.
I felt, I hated myself for who I was because I wasn't white and I wasn't like the people
in the magazines.
The more you can look like, you know, the American, you know lighter skin, certain features,
get rid of the accent, don't learn Spanish, listen to rock n' roll instead of, you know,
salsa.
So, everything was yanked away, except for one thing, which was that, you know, without
question I was Cuban.
And I've been very confused about who I am, and who I've become.
Take me to Paris, I became Parisian, take me to--I became whatever it took because I
lived in survival, just make it day by day.
But there's a price to pay for it, I have this great exterior shell in my life but all
it takes is one crack and the inside is nothing.
They call us scho-reem, which means black.
All...all of you black are from the same, we don't care.
Morocco, Iraq.
The Ashkenazis would say that?
Yes.
If you try to go into the church and you were darker than that brown bag you could not get
in.
You know I had close Latino friends and best friends who told me you can't dance at my
fifteenth because you're partner is too dark.
You can come because you're lighter.
All my life I was brought to look as much like a white woman as possible.
You straighten your hair, you stay light and I think I shared with all of you about my
grandmother making me wear the hats.
You know, these big hats because Lord help us, I should get any darker.
If I was out in the sun.
When I come in with a tan or come back from a vacation or something she always says to
her friends I..she...she really is the lightest one.
She doesn't normally look like this.
You know?
Your folks pinching your nose so you would look, you know, as European as possible.
So you wouldn't look so African.
Do you know how much shit is out there about the Jewish nose?
How much, like mockery?
And I was thinking, I started touching my nose recently and saying you poor thing, you're
just sitting here to help me breathe and like all this hatred is on you, you know?
Do you ever notice that white people when they look at you they never look at black
women as just being black women?
I have had a tendency to mythologize people of color.
We, as biracial people, are viewed as--especially women--as exotic.
It was ok to be exotic and different.
Mountain woman connected to the Earth and I want what she's got.
I'm just a woman.
You're exotic, you're easy, you're sexy, you're kinky, you're....and I'm like no.
I'm getting angry right now because when they make me into a goddess, damnit I don't have
feelings.
I can't be the person that sits and looks at that camera right now and has feelings
about stuff that's happened to me in my life because I'm a goddess.
I'm big I'm an Amazon, I'm exotic and it's not.
It...it marginalizes me, it takes the humanness out of me.
I am a damn human being.
You know, these things that can either break us or strengthen us and I think that one struggle
that has been really hard was that for awhile all that kept me alive was my rage.
That's what my survival was, was my rage and it was...I don't want to stay there because
if I stayed there they won and I understand that too.
I hear all the other women's stories, they're very similar.
And, um my path is really about compassion, about opening the heart, about taking risks,
telling the truth and showing by example.
And being very gentle on ourselves and others.
My disease of racism will almost always speak first, that that will be something that literally
is hardwired into me.
And I want to continue to ask to be willing to be the bad example to look real, not good.
And I think we would be remiss not to be conscious of what's been passed on to us.
A lot of all that so-called traditional stuff or back in the day stuff or the good ol' things,
that stuff needs to be dismantled and critiqued.
And we see all of this stuff that's affecting us with such rigid, you know, it can't change
it's monolithic, it's oppressive and so on.
But we make this stuff, it's not static, we can change it.
We can resist and we can confront, it's up to us warrior women multiply.
I feel good, oh yes, about my heart.
I feel good, oh yes, about my sisters.