A prison of sorts...

I am not certain when I realized I lived in a cage of my own making. A cage built of reassuring smiles meant to keep fear and hatred – other’s fear and hatred of the color of my skin, that is - at bay so that I might live with a modicum of peace.

Was it when I was four and discovered that my skin and that of my father was different than my mother’s and that apparently ours was not desirable? Who told me this? I don’t know. I remember coming home from nursery school and asking my mother if she was white. (She's not; she's light-skinned.) I am not even certain I understood what I was asking.

Was it when I was six and started avoiding the summer sun because my [light-skinned] aunt made fun of my ‘tan’? Hahaha, been in the sun, huh, Danny?

Was it when I was eight and I called my cousin freckle-face and she called me blackie?

Was it when I was ten and my best friend’s mother made me leave their home the first time I went to play? Or, a year later, when I heard her tell neighbors who asked who’s the darkie, that I was her daughter’s friend and that I was different?

Was it when I tried so hard to be different, to be invisible, to blend into a background where I would not incite hatred or fear or, God forbid, violence?

Was it when an old woman screamed for help, having met me in the stairs of our building, simply because my skin scared her?

Was it when a man yelled from a pick-up truck as I walked to my off-campus apartment that I should go back to Africa? A continent I have never seen.

Was it when a friend in graduate school asked me what I preferred to be called and I said Danielle and she said, no I meant, African American or black…and I said, I know what you meant.

Was it when I walked down the street with the love of my life and was lambasted endlessly by people of both races?

Was it days after my son’s birth when I heard my father-in-law exclaim joyfully on the phone with relatives that my son’s skin was white?

Was it when I cried endlessly holding my son, worried that one day he would grow to hate me because my skin would make his life more difficult?

Was it when a four year old boy told my four year old son he had to stand in the back of the line of other children to see some new toy he had brought to school…because his skin was slightly darker than his?

Was it when I had to deny my husband the opportunity for a better job in Texas because as a couple of mixed race, mixed religion, mixed culture – in what neighborhood could we live comfortably? Safely? As someone who grew up in another country where he would never think about where he might live, this was a difficult conversation. He couldn’t understand that we were (I was) tolerated, not accepted.

Was it when the father of a friend of my son’s – in our northeastern town – called my smart, athletic, kind, polite beautiful boy a racial slur, in the midst of an end-of-the school year pool party – for no reason other than because his skin was slightly tan? Stay away from that N- he told his lovely daughter.

Was it when I had to tell my adolescent son he had better stay away from trouble because if he were ever with his friends and stopped by the police, they might go home, but he would go to jail?

Was it when I didn’t travel with my son’s soccer teams to various tournaments around the country because I didn’t want the team to be treated poorly simply because I was present?

Was it when I visited my son at his Ivy-league college and was followed around the town by the local police?

Was it when my son’s best friends invited my husband and me to their wedding, a wedding my son had the honor and privilege to officiate, but I was too afraid to feel uncomfortable and unwanted by their less open-minded family members?

I don’t know really when it was. I know it wasn’t yesterday when I read about a woman who attempted to use the color of a man’s skin against him when he had done nothing wrong, when indeed, she was at fault. And I have little doubt had he not been recording the incident, he would now be sitting in a jail cell.

It wasn’t this morning when I read about a reporter (brown) and his crew being arrested despite showing their credentials and politely asking the officers to just tell them where they wanted them to go and they would move. Filming the whole time. Meanwhile, a white colleague was left alone.

It wasn’t as I read about the senseless violence of rioters and looters who are minimizing the voice of peaceful protesters, perhaps ensuring that the voiceless continue to be unheard. Violence begets violence…so, too non-violence, as has been shown over and over again.

And so, I sit here in my cage, terrified that it won’t keep the bad out anymore….that the river of tears I cannot seem to stem will drown the smiles, leaving me unprotected in an increasingly turbulent world.

My heart is breaking behind these bars.