In the third grade, my classmates wouldn’t believe me when I told them I was Hispanic. They tried to test whether I was telling the truth by asking me to speak Spanish. I hadn’t grown up speaking Spanish. All I could say were simple phrases. I would get so angry when they asked, but I still tried every time to prove myself. When people didn’t believe me it just made me angry. I felt unseen.

My family is from the Dominican Republic. My mother came to the US when she was nine and my father came when he was ten. I have only been to the island twice in my life, but it is my home. Our story started in Africa hundreds of years earlier. My ancestors were stolen and brought to Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and Dominican Republic) during the transatlantic slave trade. Genocide wiped out Dominican natives called the Taíno, leaving about five hundred of them left. Due to the different people on the island, the descendants come from a wide range of ancestry.

In middle school, I learned about colorism in my family. While hanging out with my mother in her room she told me stories about her life and her experiences with colorism with her family. She told me how older family members would make fun of her features and say she was dark, and that made her look like she was Haitian which they didn’t like. Growing up, my mother also had her hair straightened because my grandma didn’t know how to do her natural hair. Older relatives would greet my mother by pinching her nose because she had a bigger nose and singled her out because she was darker than other relatives with different features. Hearing these stories made me disgusted with members of my community. But I was grateful I didn’t grow up hearing those comments because my mother raised me to love myself. But hearing these stories made me realize the amount of hate people can have.

Students continued to question my identity in middle school. One afternoon in 6th grade while at an after-school program, I was conversing with a staff member about how I was Hispanic when a boy overheard us and interrupted our conversation. He started swearing that there was no way that I was Hispanic, that I was so black that I had to come from Africa. He argued if I were Hispanic he would be an idiot for being wrong. And I said he was. I was so mad, I have heard people say that my entire life. I realized the reason I had to go through this is because there is barely any representation of black Hispanics. It isn’t my job to educate others.

At 14, I took a World History class in school. The class taught me about the world, particularly about the Transatlantic slave trade and how Spaniards brought slaves to Hispaniola. I hadn’t been taught this in class before and it sparked my curiosity because this was my history. The class also grew my curiosity about the history of colorism in the Dominican Republic and I started to research my country's history.

That day I started to do my research on my history at home. I researched the percentages of different peoples on the island and different aspects of Dominican culture. One day I started researching famous Dominicans. That is when I learned that baseball player Sammy Sosa bleached his skin. I was disappointed that he bleached his skin to fit in so that he wouldn’t feel excluded from his people. After learning this I realized what people's words about your skin and features could do to you. I wasn’t going to let that happen to me. I decided to stop caring about what other people thought of me and how they questioned my ethnicity and identity. I know who I am and my culture, my history, and most importantly my identity, and no one else's opinion matters. I have learned more about my people's history. I have learned to see myself in the world. And I am going to make room in the world for others to see me.

© Arhyanna. All rights reserved. If you are interested in quoting this story, contact the national team and we can put you in touch with the author’s teacher.