From a young age, I was told my role was to be a bridge-builder, to be an educator. My fair-skin and mixed-racial heritage meant I could blend in enough with white people to make them comfortable enough to talk about things like race or discrimination. Unfortunately, it also made them comfortable enough to forget altogether or not realize I was a person of color and make comments they would never make in front of someone of a darker shade. Being a bridge-builder is far too much for a young child to bear, but for much of my life, I didn’t know any better.
You see, I didn’t grow up with the kind of in-your-face discrimination that so many people think of when they hear the term “racism.” Both how light I am and where I grew up geographically shielded me from so many of the experiences I hear cited by so many of my peers of color. This is a privilege I recognize and want to steward well. What I did grow up with was the stares, the inappropriate comments from friends and family when they thought no one was paying attention, the ignorance of the belief that racism was a thing of the past, despite all the evidence proving otherwise. I grew up with people touching my hair, labeling my racial identity, and assuming my stances without my permission. There was a heaviness to all this, but I was a bridge-builder.
You catch more flies with honey than you do vinegar, they say. Blood is thicker than water, they say. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, they say. They don’t mean any harm and they don’t know any better, they say.
Bridge-builders don’t get angry. They work hard and they live perfectly and they prove to everyone that all are equal. They swallow it all with a smile. They don’t ruffle any feathers.
But what happens when the bridge-builder discovers not everyone wants to cross that bridge? What about when people want to live on both sides of the bridge, playing the “nice” white person who has family members of color they love so they couldn’t possibly be “a racist,” but also are perfectly comfortable with the racist rhetoric of a politician because they agree with all the rest of his “politics?” What about when the bridge-builder realizes they could never be good enough, build a strong enough bridge, “make nice” long enough, to prove that racism isn’t the side comments a person says, but is knitted into the very fabric, the very history of our nation? What does a bridge-builder do when the chant of “MAGA” on a family member’s lips means the realization of a contentment they hold with returning to a time where your very existence would have been illegal, an abomination?
In this month that marks the 400th unfortunate anniversary of the first documented arrival of African slaves to our nation, I am sick and tired of being a bridge-builder; today, I hold anger instead. A righteous anger that serves as a call to action. An anger that doesn’t grin and bear the unbearable, but names the truth. An anger that does not allow people to be gunned down, choked, drowned, separated from their families, their names forgotten, justice never served. An anger that refuses to accept the dehumanizing of black and brown bodies. Today, I choose an anger that is warranted for every time the validity of my experiences were questioned, each time a racial slur or racist stereotype was uttered in my presence because I was believed to be “safe” or the words were believed to be “harmless,” every instance in which I was told to hold my tongue. In all those years of bridge-building, I always considered the feelings of others before myself. Fearful of stepping on toes or offending others, I tread lightly, cautiously, walking around moments like landmines, careful not to set anyone off. Today, I am no longer interested in entertaining bridge-burners, in convincing those who have no interest in being convinced, in winning over the unwinnable. Today, I have no patience for the erasure of all the ugly parts of American history, of the work to make sure stories like mine and so many others are forgotten.
Was I born for this? This bridge-building? Today, I will build no bridges. Today, I am a human hurting as the blood of my brothers and sisters cries out so loudly, it cannot be silenced.
Caught in the Quarter Life 