“In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.”
– Baba Dioum
No one has ever asked me if I am half white. I’ve been asked if I am half Black or if I am Spanish. I’ve been asked “What are you?” and “What are you mixed with?” more times than I’ve been asked what my name is, and that is no exaggeration. There are so many issues with these questions and the circumstances in which they were asked, but the most unsettling for me were the underlying implications: the clearly defined yet unspoken understanding that there was probably white in me somewhere, but that color, that half, part, and piece of me, wasn’t the one that needed an explanation.
No one has ever asked me if I am half white. The underlying implications: there was probably white in me somewhere, but that color, that half, part, and piece of me, wasn’t the one that needed an explanation. Share on XI’m not sure exactly when, but at some point, this one question phrased so many ways, began to literally break me. It shattered my spirit and my mind, it ruptured my confidence for decades, and it quite literally broke my heart. I just couldn’t understand why it mattered so much “what I was mixed with” or why my skin was so much more important to people than who I was.
The quote I shared above taught me a valuable lesson on the hate that I, along with countless others, continue to endure, for looking the way we do, sounding the way we sound, and being from the places we are from.
When I first read it, the words seemed to imply that perhaps without being taught how to empathize, and respect others, there’s no way we could get to the point of being able to love and maybe even protect something or someone other than ourselves. But upon deeper inspection of the line “we will understand only what we are taught,” I realized it was less about the absence of teaching right, and so much more about the presence of teaching hate.
I lost myself for so many years because people were taught to feel a certain way about people who look like me. Other children’s parents taught them not to trust me, boy’s parents taught them not to love me, the media taught them that they were superior to me, and history taught them that they were justified in believing so. To be honest, I still feel so alone on so many days.
People were taught to feel a certain way about people who look like me. Children’s parents taught them not to trust me, the media taught them they were superior, and history taught them they were justified in believing so. Share on XAs an adult now, and a mother and wife, I try to look at life through the lens of this quote. I approach parenthood like I am raising humans for this world who need to know that hate is typically rooted in fear and misunderstanding. I want to be the kind of partner who listens and meets my husband where he is. And I hope to always be the kind of person who loves first because I was taught to do so.
I approach parenthood like I am raising humans for this world who need to know that hate is typically rooted in fear and misunderstanding. Share on XI’m not half anything. I’m just me.
