Member-only story
Ever since I was young, I have been very aware of my race. When I’ve faced struggles for being a woman or a minority in other ways, I’ve always joked, “At least it’s not as bad as being brown.” And despite all the vitriol, I write online because I have a unique perspective I want to share with the world and because I don’t want to be silenced — there’s nothing more American, I suppose, than being a minority fighting for freedom of speech.
Yet, most of what I tell foreigners about being American today is how fundamentally racist this country is, not how free of speech we are. “Get out of my country,” is a phrase I’ve heard more times than I care to admit. Rather than debating my viewpoints online, half of America is all too happy with sliding into dog whistles and telling me I don’t belong here. The other half — the liberal half — is sadly too comfortable with microaggressions and subtle racism.
For example, when I was six years old in a cheap grocery store, my mom, sister, and I went shopping for some chips and vegetables. A disgusting white woman cut the line and when my mom called her out, she ranted at us about how we didn’t belong in America. “Go back to your fucking country,” she said. I would only learn what the word “fuck” meant years later. Years after that…
