2004-09-15 @ 12:41 p.m.....

When I stand face to face with someone it's hard.

I don't like being judged. I don't like being evaluated.

I want to scream: "YOU ONLY SEE HALF!!"

But the other half remains a mystery, even to me. So how can I school them on what they're missing when I don't even know?

I wish I had the opportunity to point to my parents and say, "See." To me that would be so powerful. The security in knowing. But I will never have that.

Am I establishing that right now? That I will never have that opportunity? Am I resigned to accept my place, my status, my precarious identity that is neither here nor there?

I remember when I was at Orientation, the first day on my job. They brought the forms back to me saying, "You didn't check one".... Not much of a choice then. I could have chosen one identity at that point and stuck to it. But why? What would that have accomplished? It still wouldn't change anything except I would be denying a part of myself. Why should I have to choose?

What kind of world is this where you have to spend time explaining yourself to everyone else? What does it even matter when they only give you a set amount of choices they want you to choose from? I could have checked anything, but all that matters is how people perceive me when they look at me. So why declare it on a form? Either I re-affirm everyone's assumptions by checking what I look like, or I check what I am (if i knew what that was) and it still wouldn't stop people from asking/assuming/talking out of their asses....

what if i made a t-shirt with all the boxes checked?

I read something online a few months after that traumatic experience. It was about this woman who would hand out little business cards to people if they said something racial in her presence: "I thought that you should know that I am Black and that the comments that you made were offensive to me. I don't feel it's necessary to call you out in front of everyone, but for future reference, try to keep this in mind." Something to that effect. I wished that I had a stack of a certain kind of card for every time I was thrown into a situation meeting new people: "I thought you should know that although I look like this, I take ALL that you say seriously. Please refrain from making assumptions about the way I look versus the way that I act. And don't make any comments about ANY particular race because that could be MY family".

It's interesting to observe people who identify as one race over the other when they look clearly the opposite. Me, all I can do is assume with the rest of the world about who I am.

what had happened was.... ~ ....what comes next?