This Is My Truth

This is My Truth (Personal Story)

​I was born in the country of the “free”, the United States of America. This country was built with the premise of equality, equal rights, equal opportunities and that in America all your dreams come true. If you work hard enough, you can accomplish anything. In some way, this is all true…on paper.

Because I’m so quiet and rarely express my views on things outside of what I share with my sister, many I talk to and those I know believe that I’m sheltered from what goes on around me. That is not the case. I’ve always known that by society’s standards I am different and am supposed to be treated as such. You see both sides of my family are from the south and I am enriched by the many stories of the struggles of my great grandparents, grandparents, and my parents as well. Both my grandmothers were young, picking cotton with their parents out in the fields. My great grandmother slaved over cleaning cooking and taking care of a white family for $7 a week, $28 a month to feed her family of 6, including my grandmother. And sometimes you wasn’t paid because her “boss” felt it wasn’t worth paying her that week despite all she had done for his family.

My grandparents worked from the ages of 7 and 8 to help their parents make ends meet in an already poor and segregated area in the backwoods of the countrysides of North Carolina and Louisiana. And all this during a time where it meant nothing if a black person disappeared and was killed simply for the color of their skin. They sat at those Colored only counters and the back of the buses. They went to segregated schools. But they also witnessed the Civil Rights movement of 1964 and leaders from our neighborhoods stepping up to make a change. They attended the rallies and marched because they were tired of being seen as less than human.

See I don’t speak about my bouts of being considered different because I’m still living it. I work at a job that while I’m grateful for, I have to sit and listen to my coworkers, who are not black, talk about the opportunities that I’ve always thought I’d have at this age. The ability to travel to places like Italy or Paris or even a private resort without having to worry about if your kind is welcomed there. Or the ability to by a home without being rejected because of who you are. Or the ability to have doors open up without so much red tape surrounding it. Or living in a neighborhood where the fruit is fresh and the options are healthy.

Most recently, looking for a new apartment to rent in what is considered a predominantly white neighborhood and receiving the feeling that you don’t belong there from the older residents of the building because another one of you just means the value of the neighborhood will go down even further. Or within your own neighborhood, an area I’ve lived in for the past 20 years, having an Indian woman stop in her tracks and clutch her belongings as you work by on your way to work. Happens more often than I’d like. Or as a 9-year-old girl being followed around the local corner store in Chicago every time by their white security guard because I was automatically profiled as a troublemaker. Or hearing a small group of white boys probably in their twenties laugh as 1 of them shouted across the street “Go home N-word” in Las Vegas. Of course, he didn’t have the balls enough to yell that last word so it’d echo like the rest. But I heard it just the same.

So I’m not exempted. I have had my share of moments throughout the years. I’ve always been an open and accepting person because that’s what my mother taught my siblings and me. She taught us at an early age that we have it 10 times harder than other races when it comes to opportunities here in the states even though we were born here. That we would encounter those who deem us less than them and that they would let us know this is what they think of us. That you would get rejected despite all your hard work at certain points in life because of who you are. That no matter what is said, no matter how mean or hurtful, no matter how much you are continued to be put into a lesser position, you will always have to fight differently than that of a lighter shade.

Yet she taught us that despite all the struggles we have gone through in history just for being a shade darker to accept people of all backgrounds. See she didn’t want her kids to grow up with the same hatred that was placed on her and all the generations before. Which is why I’ve always dreamt of having a rainbow of diversity around me that understood my ancestors’ struggles as well as mines and that there’d be a universal understanding. Pretty crazy huh? Not something that’s real huh? Well, why not? With change comes struggle, comes understanding, and comes acceptance. So if we never really tried then how in the hell do we know it won’t work.

I want to be able to walk down all streets and in all neighborhoods without that small feeling of fear and doubt that I may be attacked. I want to enjoy the company of my new friends who aren’t black without the stares and worrying if someone is going to shout out something hurtful or worse because I’m not the right complexion to be talking or hanging with them. I want to love whoever I want without threats. I want to be able to travel anywhere and not have to research how I’d be treated or what sections I have to stay away from because of the complexion of my skin. All things that go through my mind and I’m sure a majority of us when we get courageous to do the things that are considered normal for the white race. And I want it for other black people.

I’m not here to place blame or guilt-trip a race of people. That’s not who I am. This right here, written down, is just as much of an eye-opener to not only those who don’t know what it’s like to be a black person not just in America but around the world but also to me. It is my truth, a part of my history as a human being on this planet that shouldn’t be. I’m more than a number, more than just a different color. I’m a human being that eats, sleeps, shits, and breathes just like you. But more importantly, I am compassionate, understanding, accepting, and treat you the way I’d hope you’d treat me. I am not a static, a caged animal, or target practice. Just someone who wants to be seen as the human being that I am and a culture that is accepted like yours. It is an old saying but it’s so true and we deny it because we know it’s true. And that saying is United we stand, Divided we fall. I’m tired of being divided.

Until next time, this is Tammy saying keep strong, keep positive and NOTHING is impossible!!! All Lives Matter when Black Lives Matter!!

If you would like to help, Click here for a list of organizations. I will update as I find more as well as other information.