I called my ex racist
How am I supposed to build friendships and romantic relationships with people who hate me and my people?
As many of you know here, I am originally from Medellín, Colombia. I come from a middle-high working-class family. I had the luxury to attend a French middle and high school and accessed public education for my undergraduate studies. I learned several languages growing up and traveled regularly with my family. Now, I am completing my PhD between Brno in the Czech Republic and Vienna in Austria.
I identify myself as a white person in Colombia, with the sole purpose of recognizing how I have benefited from the colorist system1 embedded in our society. Both my class and race privilege have undoubtedly brought a comfort in my life that I was not aware of until I decided to migrate to Europe to pursue my post-graduate studies. Comfort is the word I use to describe the race and class privileges that I enjoyed and took advantage of during my whole life in Colombia. Certainly, as customary in a heavily segregated Colombian society, my social circle also benefited directly and indirectly from both race and class privileges. I have always thought that those privileges were borrowed by the effort of social mobilisation that my parents made through education, that they truly do not belong to me and I, as they did, need to work hard to gain my right to enjoy those privileges as well. How wrong I was!
Certainly, when traveling with my family to the Global North, I could feel that we were treated differently than we are treated in Colombia. But as a typical white person in Colombia, I lacked the knowledge or words to explain the different dynamics I was part of. Although some white Colombians made an effort to educate themselves on systems of oppression, anti-racism, and decolonial thinking, this was not my case. I claimed to be a progressive liberal that believed in equality but never truly understood how cultural and social white supremacist ideas were embedded in our society and our collective and individual existence. I am ashamed of that racist person I used to be and still am when I am not living a conscious life. I was part of those who believe that equality means the homogenization of our individual experiences in order to silence dissident experiences such as the experiences of Afro-Colombians and indigenous peoples. I also felt morally superior, spouting racist tropes such as: in Latin America, we are all mixed race; I am also part black or indigenous. I also believed that talking about the social inequalities of Colombian society beyond the capitalist oppression of class was just an attempt to divide us, the socially aware people, against neoliberal ideas. I would claim, in profound ignorance, that race and gender were irrelevant for our collective horizons to eradicate poverty and social injustice. Yes, it is shameful to accept it; I was as they are.
Therefore, I am not writing this from any moral pedestal above them because I recognize that I am also them and they can also be me. I am just writing and sharing this blog to remember that my personal deconstruction is an endless pursuit that I have to prioritize every morning of every day of my life. I can also be blinded by the hatred and scarcity of love, energy, and time that the system makes us believe in, to take a deep breath, rethink, and question my pre-set assumptions, as I was when I was a teenager. I am writing this blog to document my pain of being dehumanized and discriminated against just because. To remember that I am capable of inflicting the same pain on others if I surrender to the oppressive practices of white supremacy ideas. If I refuse to listen, to love, to forgive, to trust, and to dream with and for others, especially those who are the most different from me.
I wonder a lot, as you can see in many of my entries in this blog, how I became so obsessed with collective liberation, so radicalized that I have shifted all my personal dreams and goals to align them with my pursuit of liberation and the collective dream of a world where we all can be. But Octavia E. Butler gave me the words. I am seed, we all are, and under the right conditions, we can all be nurtured to change. Because God is change, and change is the only constant in our lives. Since October 7th, the urgency to live a meaningful life has been a must for my mental well-being. I refuse categorically to keep living as if I have no power at all. No power to change the reality, my reality, and the reality of those who wake up to bombs over their heads from refugee camp to refugee camp in the name of God, a god who does not care for them. God is change. I refuse to remain silent. I am reclaiming my power, which has always belonged to me because I exist here and now. I am reclaiming my voice even when I am afraid. I am a kind person who is not afraid to be disliked for speaking up for the liberation of my Palestinian brothers and sisters, even if many of you think otherwise, for failing and trying again to build collectives where we are loved and belong. I reclaim my power by sharing my experiences, by introducing myself in my own words and terms, by not letting anyone tell my story. A story of struggle and privilege, of solitude, but above all, of love and joy for my life.
Thirty years took me to realize I was wrong. I am deserving of everything I dream of. I deserve to love and be loved even when I am not courageous enough or intellectual enough. Even when I am flooded with rage for all the injustices happening right now. Even when I do nothing. I am deserving of being in bed when I am sick or healthy. I am deserving of protection even when I seem to have it all figured out. I am deserving of a home and a warm meal even if I don’t work hard. I am deserving of joy and happiness just because I am here, and so are you. My struggle is not to own the privileges that my parents inherited to me. My struggle is to dismantle any privilege that is built upon the suffering of others. My struggle is for everyone to feel deserving of everything their body, spirit, and soul need because they are here and work towards the materialization of those needs. But none of this personal change would have happened if I had remained in Colombia. The comfort of savoring the privilege of class and race is not a nurturing space for me. The discomfort of migration has been where I have created the suitable conditions to flourish. I am not saying that we need to experience the pain of discrimination to grow, but in my case, being far from the Colombian social norms gave me the surplus of energy, time, and intellect to reflect and grow despite the struggle of being an immigrant.
I would like to claim my pain as unique, but it is not. Pain is a common place of connection and growth. Rage as well. And our individual and collective power can also be catalyzed by pain and rage, but it can only be sustainable by love. When I moved to Europe, specifically to Central Europe, my social assimilation here has forced me to live experiences as a non-white woman. Yes, I am socialized as a non-white person here, although many Latinx can white pass in these societies, it is not my case. When you savor privilege in a racist and colorist society in Colombia, you have a contrasting experience that allows you to recognize almost instantly that you are being treated as less than a human. I know how difficult it is for a white person to understand that. But let’s have a collective agreement that we do not need to understand someone else’s experiences to validate and recognize them. The fact that you in your individuality can’t understand it does not delegitimize the experience or make the experience a lie. Even more importantly, we do not need to over-intellectualize someone else’s experiences to do something about it. Yet, I want to be explicit here, no for you white reader, but for me. In a emotionally sanitise society, where every emotion and feeling needs to be racionalized, I tend to minimize my pain and suffering claiming that I am so privileged that I have no right to feel my own pain. This dysfunctional strategy has broken my connection with my feelings represing them in a way that no longer serve my purpose of collective liberation. My unrsolved pain is transformed to a tool for pain to others, especially my loved ones. Yes, I am also capable of inflicting an excruiting amount of pain to myself and others. Yet, journaling and archiving have been tools I have integrated in my life since February this year to navigate my depression and anxiety episodes. And to reclaim my connection with my erotic power2 I write about my emotions, my feelings and my thoughts. Now, I am sharing a list of experiences I have face during my six years living in central Europe. They happen with my former romantic partners and their families, with my colleagues at work, in the grocery stores or pubs.
I am being followed by the security personnel in every grocery store when I am doing my groceries. Yes, this happens almost every week and sometimes twice per week. This is an experience shared commonly by black people, but it also happens to brown people like me. This still happens after four years of going to the grocery store in the same place.
I have been offered cleaning jobs in the public transportation when I am traveling back home from work. I rarely engage in conversation on public transportation, usually due to my limited knowledge of Czech or German languages; however, I am proficient enough to exchange pleasantries and be kind when people need it. As they see me as a kind person, they offer to come to their houses and clean them, of course with payment to help me.
I have not counted the times when I am sitting and waiting for a really long time in restaurants to be served. But I have just a few spots I frequently go to where this situation does not happen to me. There are always people who refuse to serve me in restaurants even though I am fully capable of ordering in the Czech language. I no longer have places around my office where I can go for a lunch menu without facing this situation.
I was taught how to use cutlery at the table by my former mother-in-law. I was asked several times if I knew how to set the table and how to use the fork and knife. Although I am way more educated, come from a higher social class, and have traveled more of the world than her and my partner did at that time.
I still experience situations where colleagues misspell my country’s name even though I have been part of the institution for more than four years, and Colombia is a place of interest in the research of our institute. I have been lectured several times about different cultural and political aspects of Colombia by white Europeans at work.
I remember sitting during lunch at work and being asked how I smuggle cocaine when I travel from Colombia to Europe, about prices and the quality of the Colombian cocaine. This was a full 40-minute conversation with a white European man and woman, colleagues at my workplace, where they asked and suggested that I should traffic cocaine from Colombia to Europe.
I have been lectured multiple times about the way I eat. My romantic partners and their families seem to know more about my body and my diet than me. I have been also accused of eating like a fat person, being unhealthy, and warned that I will be fat soon if I continue eating Colombian food and fried food. Instead, they agreed I should adopt their Central European diet, bread, and red meat. I experienced these comments both times while struggling with severe depression.
Every time I need a medical checkup or go to banks, I am treated last after all the locals in line even though my appointments are made months in advance and I can speak their language. I remember my dermatologist told me that she was not an expert on my skin when I asked her to check a mole that could be dangerous for me. Although she decided to practice preventive medicine and remove it at my request, it was frustrating to hear that not even medical doctors are trained to provide people like me with proper healthcare.
As you can guess, I am an active person in different collectives, especially feminist collectives. Multiple times, I have been dismissed when I bring my perspective as a non-white person. Going beyond the gender discussion in predominantly white spaces is rough. I have been commanded to shut up or to wait for my concerns to be prioritized since gender, especially seen as an issue of white feminism, is more important and urgent. The next time this will be the priority. I am already out of those spaces; there won’t be a next time for me since I decided to prioritize my experiences in my whole intersectionality.
Europe is a racist place, or even if you want to sugar coat it, a racially insensitive place, even more than Colombia or the US. The normalization of racism here is shocking for anyone who comes from Abya Yala and Turtle Island. Having a human interaction without a racist comment seems utopian. Therefore, I have just two options: let it go or point it out. Since October 7th, I have decided to not be part of the normalization of the bigotry of white people even if it seems insignificant. Since then, I have been lectured about how systems of oppression manifest in Europe by white Europeans. I am constantly being lectured on racism, xenophobia, and sexism by white European men, colleagues, and superiors. How fun to hear: this is not related to race or white supremacy.
Social settings are a nightmare for me. Sitting for hours with colleagues always hoping that the conversation will take place in a familiar language to me. I have been in countless social settings where people just refuse to speak English even though all of them are fluent in English just because it is not comfortable to them. I am just sitting there isolated from the conversation until I am lucky enough to catch any word in German or Czech to introduce myself into the conversation.
Even when conversations are in English, white people find ways to get back to their languages and leave me out of the conversation. This even happened with my former partners when they decided to speak German with their ex-girlfriend while I was sitting in the middle of them, as if I were invisible.
Recently, I attended a social gathering with my colleagues. As usual, I did not read the last email changing the meeting time from 17:30 to 18:00. I am a punctual person due to my profound respect for other people’s time, so I headed to the bar after my tennis lesson at 17:30. A colleague showed up around 18:05 and waved at me but decided not to sit at the booked table but to stay in the bar. After almost 20 minutes, four colleagues sat at the table with me. Yes, they decided not to sit with me for 20 minutes. I felt left out and hurt, yet I presumed their motivation was about not doing the effort to speak English with me instead of Czech. Protecting my heart and giving grace to them does not shield me from the pain of being alone for 20 minutes and the nostalgia of remembering the times when I would never have experienced such a thing.
I am a woman, as the majority of us, who has faced different types of violence. Unlike many, I have decided to speak up and file complaints when I have felt violated by bosses, colleagues, and family. Hence, my life has been shaped tremendously by those decisions. They motivated not only leaving Colombia but also having a limited and troubling relationship with my family. It is almost impossible to get to know me in depth without acknowledging that I have experienced gender-based and domestic violence. Both experiences (the violence and speaking out/formally complaining) have given me an extra shot of sensitivity and perspective about how systems of oppression are held in place. Therefore, I have shared them with my romantic partners. I got a lot of sympathy at first, but quickly it transformed into gaslighting. As Sara Ahmed described in her book “Living a Feminist Life,” to unexperience the transformation that women go through in their emancipation is not possible.
Many, including my parents, are shocked by seeing me alone in Brno and Vienna. They often claim how strong I am. Yet, the idea of a Latina woman alone in Europe pursuing a Ph.D. seems to be synonymous with being lost. I have had several bosses here in Europe, not only supervisors but also regular bosses since I have done different jobs to support myself throughout the years. The majority of them have treated me as a person with zero agency for deciding my future. They often lecture me on what is best for my life both personally and professionally. I can’t remember how many times superiors and bosses have mansplained and whitesplained racism and feminism for my own sake.
Although I consider myself an open-minded person, dating white European men comes with a cultural shock as you might conclude by reading this post. The cultural clash becomes quite problematic when judgment is made based on a person’s cultural practices and commonalities. I am surprised by how people in Europe adopt supremacist practices based on their culture and ignore completely the context-based notion of what we call “normal.” I have a hard time adjusting to certain couple dynamics. One of them was the fact that my ex-partner still hangs out with his exes in group settings. Do not get me wrong; this is not about jealousy. In Colombia, it is not common to have any interaction with your ex-partners at all, so yes, being in a group friend setup with his ex-partner was weird. I tried to share those feelings with him and he told me that I certainly won’t be a good mother or partner because befriending an ex-partner is not normal to me.
For almost five years, I made the decision to only read non-white female, trans, and queer writers. This is particularly difficult in central Europe. Finding books, especially from writers from the global south in English is almost impossible without Amazon (Of course I am boycotting Amazon). I was told I am racist, sexist, and antisemitic for doing so.
There is no place without sexual harassment. I left Colombia due to my formal complaint of sexual harassment by a professor and I have entered institutions where I also faced sexual harassment even though they have no protocols or even know what sexual harassment is. Since my public call-out for Palestinian freedom, I have also faced harassment due to my political ideas. Nasty emails, false narratives about me, and multiple unwanted conversations have taken place, but I am still portrayed as the conflict person for asking about the positionality of my institutions with respect to the genocide committed by “Israel” in Palestine.
Finally, as I become louder in my inquiries I also become more visible. Since October 7th, I have lost the fear of speaking out and started calling out white mediocrity and bigotry when I see it or hear it. Of course, my white colleagues think that I owe them free labor and education, and asking questions about their lousy job is a commitment to being a token and available for exploitation.
These nineteen experiences are those I remember, replaying in my head and trying to make sense of this new reality for me. I break into tears just by remembering how outcast and humiliated I felt. But my most recurrent thought is always, how I can deal with them in a way that I am still enjoying my life here with also the amazing people I have met here. But, I am angry. Despite the kindness and the love I like to live by, it is hard to make a space for yourself so far from what makes you feel comfortable and safe. It is hard because with every one of these experiences, I get the famous phrase: “Why don’t you go back to your country?” Then I remember that for non-white people around the world that’s their daily reality, as it is mine now. I wish I could go back to Colombia to my friends and my soulmates. Those who have seen my growth, my strength, and my pain. Those who love me even when I am so incoherent and lost. I miss them with every fabric of my body and my soul. I wish I could be their neighbors and babysit their future kids and pets. I wish I could be in their book clubs or running marathons alongside them. I wish with all my heart I could be in Colombia. I do not have that privilege. I can’t come back to my motherland without fearing for my life because that’s the price that people who dare to challenge the violence in our societies get. Despite my experiences here, I am safer here than in Colombia. I have accepted my destiny, but I refuse to let go of the South.
I decided to put all these experiences, the pain, and anger that they caused me, in this blog to carry out my dialectic process. I can’t deny that I wonder how you can build friendships with people who justify these behavioursF from other colleagues. How can you build romantic relationships with people who justify that you are not being treated with dignity? How can you sit at a table with colleagues who see you as a drug dealer? Or with people who do not care to talk in a common language so you are included in the conversation? How do you build relationships with people who see your value as a human being relative to how useful you are to them? So yes, I called my ex racist, but then I realized while reading bell hooks, “racist” is not the right word for him and for them. They have embraced white supremacy as their common ground but do not hope (at least not explicitly) to dominate me.
prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group.
Read The uses of erotic: erotic as a power by Audre Lorde https://www.centraleurasia.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/audre_lorde_cool-beans.pdf