My experience with racism 

My next topic was going too be slut shaming but last week I posted a video on Facebook and I was shocked to uncover racism in my own small pool of Facebook friends. My husband and I have a small business and I post from our business page and my default post setting is public, so I accidentally picked up a random troll that was not on my friends so I changed the post to friends only when I realized that.  Even with the one random person I ended up blocking two different people that I’ve known for over 10 years because of this post.

 I had not even been paying attention to my phone, I was outside with my husband working on our business.  I posted the video at 6am and later that evening I got calls from both my best friends in shock of the frenzy that came from my post. I shared two videos and my outrage and shame following the not guilty verdict of officer Jeronimo Yanez who shot and killed philadro castile. I had people arguing against white privilege and that we don’t have race problems in this country. Like, I can’t even…I just can’t respond to these people. I’m not going to waste my energy when people literally just like to hear themselves talk, or in this case to see their comments on Facebook. I will admit that I went a little harsh going straight to unfriending them and calling them racists but I have ZERO TOLERANCE FOR ANY RACISM OR DISCRIMINATION! End of story.  

When I was younger I moved a lot and almost always lived in apartments. Same single mom story different day. The places I grew up were melting pots of ethnicity. I played with kids that barley spoke English, I traded candy for lessons in Russian with Ina, played tag with Prince, Ashley, Anton and Lorenzo. I grew up with r&b and rap. Both my parents loved loud music and good sound systems. KUBE 93 was the only station we listened too. I was free to be who I wanted to be, whatever it was. I was not taught to see color, but I sure learned about it when I moved to Puyallup. 

1998, that’s when I learned what it felt to be an outcast. I learned how cruel and ignorant people could be. Puyallup is where I learned about racism.

Puyallup told me I was acting black.  And let’s let’s just stop right here. What does “acting black ” even mean? That right there is racism.  That statement will forever bother me. Labels are so 1995 ok…. But seriously, what does that mean? And more importantly why did everyone say that constantly in Puyallup, but not in Renton? I was the same person, but treated very differently.  During this facebook shit show I caused I got a message from a guy who knew me in jr. high and he told me “you were always on the other side ” excuse me? who’s side is the other side? Last I checked there are no side’s. This was A person I would least expect basically attacking me with his racism and obvious hate of anything that doesn’t look like him. I was even more enraged to see these public comments on my post. I thought back to how I was teased for how I dressed and acted in Puyallup, but not in any of the other school districts I went to. In Renton and federal way no one questioned me. But leave it to Puyallup school districts to suspend me for throwing up gang signs in the yearbook, which if you are interested check out Ballou Jr high yearbook 02, you will see me, not throwing up gang signs but hey I acted black so I must have deserved the assumption and quick action to curb my gang affiliation. Or the time in high school where some female students said I called them the “N” word, which I absolutely did not but in that case I was white and they were black so of course I must have said it seeing how racism is so unchecked in Puyallup.

And to top it all off I dated a Hispanic boy in high school and people literally wrote their disgust of that relationship in all of my yearbooks. I always thought why does it bother people so bad ? Oh wait, maybe because they are racist.  But the question is how can we still be here??

 If 15 people reacted to my post and 3 of those people show their racists colors, that’s 1/5th of the participants with racism in their hearts. That’s our community people. We can’t keep pretending there is not a problem. How can we bring light to this horrible epidemic? How can we bring understanding and empathy to our human family?

We are one world – together. All people. All creatures. All things are connected. We are losing what makes us human by hating and being bigots and racists. 

Racism is real, white privilege is real. White people telling other white people theses things are not real needs to stop. We need to step up as community and shame this bad behavior. 

Im going too continue to talk about this and call out racism when I see it. I invite you all to do the same. Shame is a powerful thing, and discrimination in any form is shameful.