I DON'T SEE COLORS

Every time someone says this to me I want to scream: a part of me dies.

I tried to find a simple way to explain it but the truth is that there is no easy way to tell what it means to be told that what characterizes you does not exist.

The first thing that the rest of the world sees in you and that therefore accompanies your every experience, your every trauma, your every joy, which defines your life; it is not recognized.

I find this sentence hypocritical.

Anyone can say that the person in front is blonde and tall and short has blue eyes and curly hair so why deny it: it's the same for black, Asian, Arab, Latina, interethnic, and yes sir. also white.

It seems like an innocent answer. A statement accompanied by the satisfied expression of my interlocutor: I am superior to these things, I do not judge anyone by the color of their skin, it does not concern me.

But that's the point.

It does not concern you.

Because, let's face it, most of the people who allow themselves to pronounce these words are people who do not experience the reality of being one of those "colors" every day.

It is a deeply racist phrase.

Yes, racist you got it right.

And the time has come to understand that racism is not always violent or murderous.

It is often everyday and mean.

It's the little things that take up space.

From morning to night, from the moment I leave my house to the moment I return and sometimes even within my own walls I am a black woman.

This means many things but above all that even if I wanted to deny the color of my skin I would not be allowed.

There is no time when I stop being my color for one simple reason: everyone around me sees it clearly, I can assure you!

To say that you don't see colors and that for you we are all the same means erasing everything that happens in my day and that is linked to my being black.

In the morning when I enter the school where I teach, the professors who don't know me mistake me for the cleaning lady or a repeating student.

Embarrassed, when they understand that I am there as their equal and that like them I have knowledge to pass on and the skills to do so; they tell me “you look so young!”.

I am thirty years old and colleagues younger than me have never had to justify their presence.

When I take the metro or public transport and a controller gets on, everyone expects me to be ticketless because you know; minorities go hand in hand with crime.

When I am well dressed and with make up on and I want to enter a restaurant on the renowned Parisian streets there is always a moment of surprise or skepticism from the person at the door who seems to be wondering how I can afford to enter this place reserved for the most privileged people (and therefore it goes without saying not to a black woman).

When I feel hurt by the word "negro" that is still used - and in front of me sometimes - people say to me "oh sorry I didn't do it on purpose" or "oh but I'm just joking" without realizing that for me , that word is a symbol of trauma, violence, pain.

When I walk down the street with my braided hair crowning my face I know someone will try to touch it or have a seemingly kind comment about "the wonderful mess that only suits you".

Because obviously I'm not a black woman but I represents them all.

And I don't think there is a need to comment on the rest of the sentence and the highly derogatory content.

These are just some examples of daily micro aggressions, the list could go on without stopping because every day I collect a new one, an aspect of me that I had not yet imagined or which I had not thought with negativity but that people around me don't make themselves beg to take it out.

It is a privilege to be able to say as if it was nothing to not see all this.

A privilege to live your life without wondering if some things are inaccessible to you due to the amount of melanin in your body.

As good as our intentions are, all that this sentence conveys is a desire to detach oneself from responsibility for one's actions.

Not wanting to see the color of the person who is in front of us does not erase the history that this image carries with it, and the judgment that you will voluntarily or unconsciously bring about it.

Telling me you don't see me as a black woman is the same as saying you just don't see me.

It means that any gesture, word or action you have in my presence will not take into account who I am, what I can feel or reject from your part.

Open your eyes. Watch and accept.

See me.