CHICAGO, IL —1989. Life was perfect until it wasn’t. What I mean is that everything until that year seemed to go according to the natural laws of “life.“ I had two great parents. I played in every single sport imaginable. I played every single music instrument. I went to school, I was on the honor roll, I had a little brother, a dog, a pet worm, and even an imaginary friend. I went to church every Sunday, I was an altar girl, I had a group of friends I associated with daily and we had a great bond. I was a Girl Scout. Every single summer I came to Chicago on an airplane by myself, sometimes with my parents, to see my grandparents in their really nice house in the Chicago suburbs. My grandparents spoiled me, and I knew I was loved by everyone.
Then someone asked me the question, “What color is you?” That was a quite shocking and bold question to ask or to be the recipient of because I had no idea how to answer. What do you mean? I’ve never had to identify. I was just always accepted. The change was a culture change, a change of my environment, which changed my being.
Meanwhile, my parents divorced. I was uprooted from my childhood home in Washington D.C., and brought to the Midwest, in an area where I had no roots. Everybody here had roots, they had my perfect life. I was not a part of theirs. So when that question was asked I said, “I don’t know, I’m not a color.” From that moment on I experienced my first real form that I can remember of colorism.
The confusing thing to me at that time was that it came from someone who identified as someone like my father: a Black, an African-American or however-you-identify-yourself person, but not a color that differentiated you. From that moment, I spent the next few years in an internal battle, as well as external, of who was I. I wasn’t “Black” enough to hang out with the “Black” kids. I wasn’t “white “enough to hang out with the “white “kids, so who was I?
Many times I made a joke about it. I’d say that my mind was internally battling, “the left side is battling with the right side,” meaning the Black side is arguing with the white side about “are you Black or white today.” I was 15 years old, living in a neighborhood where, depending upon how you identify yourself, that’s how you are treated. From there you have to pick which side you’re going to ride with, to protect yourself. White: you can be harassed, be a snitch, an addict or a neutron. Black equals, in my area, GD, Vice Lord (any fraction), Four Corner Hustler (4CH) or Blackstone. On my block in that year I had to go with 4CH. So now: how do you go from this perfect life to this . . .
Life was perfect until it wasn’t
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