"... Slowly I unbowed my head, refused my estate and began to challenge the way things were. But it's taken over thirty years to unlearn the belief instilled in me that white is better than brown - something that some people of color never will unlearn. And it is only now that the hatred of myself, which I spent the greater part of my adolescence cultivating, is turning to love."
From "La Prieta" by Gloria Anzaldúa.
I'm speechless ... This very paragraph captures my background, my life experience, my struggles, my many lost and sometimes won battles. Why does it take so long to realize something like this? Why didn't I realize about this when I was a teenager? Why did I hate myself for being brown (though with beautiful skin, beautiful brown eyes, shiny, straight and healthy brown hair, beautiful Aztec face, beautiful Aztec body)? When did I learn that white was better than brown? Fuck that moment! I think that hateful moment happened back in 1492, not so long ago ...
Now I'm trying to love me, and I do love me, though sometimes this is kind of difficult - now this doesn't manifest itself in not loving my browness but rather in not trusting myself ... because I'm brown. Sometimes I think I'm not capable of doing certain things and just let go, then I turn my head and see somebody else (with way less qualities than me) achieving the same thing I had just run away from. But this is changing, for the better, for me.
For me, for my browness, for my mother and father, for my brothers and sisters, for my grandparents, for my people, for me ...
