My life is a miracle.
I witnessed a surreal transformation in my city late last year. I got lost in South Miami, a part of town I never have a reason to visit.
There’s a hood there, much like the one I grew up in, except it’s filled with Hispanic people. I couldn’t stop blinking my eyes as I drove in circles around the unfamiliar streets. I thought I was dreaming.
The entire neighborhood was filled with delipidated buildings, abandoned cars and random clutter. The cheap clothing worn by mothers hauling multiple kids through the streets sidestepping broken bottles and resting on bus stop benches reminded me of home except, this was nowhere near the home I knew growing up in Liberty City which during my day was one of the roughest neighborhoods in the county.
Sometimes I sit and ask myself, “Why the fuck do I know Spanish? Why the hell is it that sometimes my words come out in another language when I’m a Black person?”
It’s this city.
I think about the history of my city quite often. I think about the history of my people, Black people.
When I look in the mirror I see me but I also see my past. Not the past that I have lived, but the women who came before me. My mother, her mother, her mother’s mother and so forth. We aren’t that far removed from slavery, you know.
I examine my light skin, my tightly coiled hair, my green eyes and my toned physique. I see my Mama with the same skin tone, the same hair, the same eyes, the same legs. I picture her mother, whom I never met. She was beautiful. So beautiful. One of my aunts looks just like her. My grandmother had 11 children. Eleven.
Beyond that, I don’t know.
I don’t know what happened between the time my ancestors were corralled off the slave ship with rich dark skin and high cheekbones and me standing in front of the mirror noticing the high yellow skin tone I now wear. Having worked and ruled our own land, oblivious to the treachery that lay ahead, we were brough here and our entire destiny was changed.
I don’t know when my genes were diluted. I don’t know why I look like this.
I can’t help but notice how bright my skin is, yet I’m a Black woman. I can’t help but cringe everytime you compliment me on my beauty.
“Ooh, your eyes are soo pretty!” you say.
Bitch please! If you could feel the sting of the rape that caused this, would you still consider it beauty?
I think about them all the time, the women who came before me. Regardless of what they had to go through, I’m proud of them. I’m proud of them for surviving. Many didn’t.
I think about my race, my people. We were taught that we were subhuman, that we were property, that we couldn’t learn, that our lives were inconsequential to this world.
Isn’t that a trip? The very people that used us to build their fortune somehow convinced us that we had no contribution to this world.
And we believed them.
They broke us of our culture. They broke us out of our beliefs. They broke up our families. They taught us that we were commodities. They fucked us up mentally and spiritually.
But you know what..regardless of all that, we didn’t shrivel up and die.
We didn’t give up.
Every single Black person alive today is a part of an extraordinary race of overcomers.
If only we could shrug off the self hatred that they taught us, we would awaken to see the strength that allowed us to sustain ourselves. The same strength that allowed us to become the heroes that we are today.
That is my hope.
That is my dream.
I hope that we realize that we are more than survivors, we are more than what they say we are. We are more than what we even think we are. We are human. We are worthy.
We are unbreakable, unshakeable and miraculous.
It’s true.
But for some reason, we don’t believe it.
I wish we did.