by Janalie Cobb

I am black. I’m confident, proud and unshakeable in my blackness. But there is no mistaking—I’m also white. My skin is light; my hair is curly, not kinky; I inherited the shape of my face and curve of my smile from my very Irish mother. I’m also confident, proud and unshakeable in my multiracial identity. So I’ve known the meaning of inner turmoil since I was nine years old and I first heard the names Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman.

For me, being biracial inherently means living between two worlds, worlds that clash constantly. When my BIPOC (Black, Indigenous People of Color) friends talk about race wars and race riots, part of me shuts down. I twirl my Irish claddagh ring around my finger and suppress the white. I hope my hair looks kinkier than normal and my skin darker, for fear that they may look at me and see an outsider: someone who can never fully understand their pain and anguish because my whiteness, while only half, shields me from the depths of danger and despair that come with being fully black. When I visit my mother’s family, I hope they simply see their relative. I silently plead that they leave the microaggressions at home, that they see me not simply as a black person, but as their black family member. Someone they love. But I can never fully suppress either half of me in either instance. Wherever I go, whatever I say, I hold the shadows of my white mom and my black dad behind me, constantly reminding me of where I come from.

I have a memory of having a conversation in my fourth grade classroom with another student about Trayvon Martin. I don’t recall much about it, but I do know one thing about the conversation very clearly: my naturally thick and curly hair, a mix of my black and Irish heritage, had been straight-ironed and then curled. This small fact is incredibly significant. I didn’t yet understand what it meant to want straight hair; I didn’t know it was ingrained anti-blackness. But I begged for it. Day after day until I was nine years old, I pleaded with my parents to let me straighten my hair. When they finally did, I pleaded with my parents to let me curl it again. Like the white girls did.

My internal conflicts don’t just focus on being biracial. Growing up as the only biracial woman in my own life, I had no direction. No one to teach me what it meant to navigate a woman’s life between white and black, balancing stereotypes of extreme fragility and weakness against stereotypes of unrelenting anger and sexual promiscuity.

And so, when I learned of George Zimmerman’s brutal, racially driven killing of Trayvon Martin, it was against a backdrop of figuring out my racial identity in the context of my gender. While I no longer strive for stick-straight hair, I what it means to be a biracial woman is still not clear.

When riots broke out across the United States over the unjust murders of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, it wasn’t long before people started questioning why so few remembered Breonna Taylor’s name. Or Atatiana Jefferson. Or 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones. Why didn’t black women receive the same outrage, the same riots, as black men when killed by the police? Why were black women continually overlooked?

I had another question. Did I have the right, through all of these protests, to express outrage as a black woman? I am black, and I am proud. But I have immense light-skinned privilege. Within the black community and without, my whiteness forces me onto a higher pedestal than dark-skinned women. I’m less likely to be considered angry and dangerous, more likely to be considered attractive. My hair twirls around itself like a corkscrew, with a visible, obvious curl that tells the world I’m not fully black. My face is angular, like my mother’s, instead of round, like my father’s. I can tan, and I can burn. The world knows I’m not fully black. This is my new inner turmoil.

Of course I will be outraged no matter what. Whether as a black woman, a white woman, or a biracial woman, I am full of anger. It’s not okay that police officers kill over one thousand people a year. It’s not okay that police officers provoke, mace, beat and arrest peaceful protestors. More than that, it’s unjust. But to say, throughout all of these protests, that I’m not terrified about whether or not other black women would accept me should a race war truly break out, would simply be false. With my hair too loose and my skin too light, it’s always a guess whether or not the people around me agree that I’m truly a black woman.

I still have no one in my life to help me navigate these questions. Unlike my brothers, who don’t look mixed, my father can’t teach me what it means to be a multiracial woman. He can’t guide me through the protests and teach me how to talk to police if I’m ever pulled over, because the world will perceive me—a small, light-skinned young woman—far differently than it does him—a large, dark-skinned middle-aged man.

And so I go through life blind. No usher to direct me to my identity, no pilot to fly me from point A to point B. Without the international black lives matter protests, I swim through oceans of microaggressions and sideways looks, trying to find where I fit in the worlds in which I live. In the backdrop of the international Black Lives Matter protests, I’m not sure I can swim anymore, and I may just drown.

I’m positive I’m a woman; I’m positive I’m black; I’m positive I’m white. What I’ve never been sure of, and what I may never be sure of, is what it means to be all of those things, at once.

by Matthew Wabunoha

George Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin eight years ago. At the time, I didn’t understand why my mom mandated watching only CNN and ABC, nor did I understand why she burst into tears when the jury declared Zimmerman not guilty. Kids die all the time, I thought. How was this different from the creepy Dateline stories we all watched on weekends?

After switching schools in second grade, in one of my first gym classes, one of my classmates called me a slave. I notified the teacher, they called his parents, and the boy started crying. His mom consoled him. I didn’t cry. In fact, it didn’t bother me until I started high school. Throughout middle school, I was one of five Black kids in my grade. The town was 93% white. So, every time the Black history substitute came in, it was “Hey Matt, is that your dad?” Every time I won a breakaway in lacrosse I ran “like a Kenyan,” but I was still the “whitest Black person” they knew because I got good grades and spoke “like a white person.”

In high school, I joined the Afro-Latinx society. I went on a trip to visit the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama my sophomore year. I started to pay attention to the way I navigate the world as a Black man, and get a better sense of just how intimate a relationship race and gender have with the foundation of our nation. In high school, I became increasingly passionate about learning and fighting for the rights of the marginalized, and was so excited about my newfound knowledge that I loved getting into debates, challenging my ability to defend what I knew was true with those whose thoughts differed from mine. For a while, I strove for that. But I continued to read, argue, read some more, and argue some more, and I realized how ridiculous my conversations were becoming. I was defending my right to live. My right to play with a toy in public, to sleep in my bed, to walk back home and not get shot. My right to exist as a Black man in the United States. Things that should never be up for debate.  As Black children, we’re forced to grow up faster than our peers; research published by the American Psychological Association shows Black boys are more likely to be mistaken as older than they actually are, and more likely to be seen as guilty by a jury when charged with a crime. So, when the white kid in your dorm feels it’s their place to spark a debate with you questioning the innocence of police brutality victims, or dorm faculty squint and call you “guilty,” as though you’ve committed a crime, every time you check in, you don’t feel the same desire to have a conversation with them. You grow tired. Tired of perpetuating debates over the freedoms of those who look like you. Tired of educating those who don’t wish to be educated, but aim to justify systemic abuse. To Black men like me, and our Black siblings: it’s not your job to educate your peers, and do not let anyone make that your job. If it’s emotionally draining, or just plain repetitive, to explain to people why your life deserves to be treated with the bare minimum decency, take care of yourself. If they want to learn, they will, but if they don’t, they won’t––and THAT is never on you.

by Faith Lasley

Marsha P. Johnson was a black trans woman who may have thrown the first brick at the stonewall riot, a pivotal and historic moment in queer history. She was a symbol of strength and empowerment in the LGBTQ+ movement. This portrait honors her in light of pride month and the recent protests fighting for black lives.

by Vinayak Kurup

I. Some Background

When police raided the Stonewall Inn in 1969, they beat up patrons and arrested employees and people guilty of cross-dressing. Increasingly agitated by police harassment and social discrimination, angry patrons formed a crowd outside the bar, watching as police led the thirteen individuals from the bar to the cop cars outside. But when an officer hit a lesbian woman over the head as he forced her into the cruiser outside, she cried out to the crowd, “Why don’t you guys do something?”

People listened. They began to throw pennies, bottles, cobblestones and other objects at the police. Within minutes, the Stonewall Riots had begun. Over the next six days, thousands would take to the streets, galvanized by action. Today, the Stonewall Riots are celebrated as one turning point in the long, arduous fight for LGBTQ+ equality. President Barack Obama declared the site of the riots a national monument in 2016, and every year thousands assemble to commemorate the legacy of those six days. At the time, however, the rioters faced widespread dissent across the nation, vicious media coverage and even disagreement within the gay community.

II. Wendy’s

Nick Valencia is reporting live from the Wendy’s in Atlanta. My dad and I sit on the couch, watching the building in front of which Rayshard Brooks was shot by police. It’s engulfed in fire. The screen pans from shaky cell-phone footage to a wide-angle helicopter shot, and that’s when I notice how big the charcoal plumes of smoke are, coming from the building. Valencia tells us that protestors have blocked off the highway as well. My dad sits there and shakes his head.

“Going to hell.” I’ve heard many people—friends and family, newspapers and television anchors—say the same thing about what they see today. And I am conflicted. The unrelenting voices of protestors have assured the arrest of the officers responsible for killing George Floyd; they have sparked conversations about defunding and dismantling police departments. They continue to demand justice for those names the headlines miss: Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Riah Milton, Dominique Rem’mie Fells. It seems that today, with a fresh, national spotlight on racism and police brutality , we are on a path towards equality and greater opportunity for Black people and other people of color. And yet, there are many of our friends and family who may post a black square on their Instagram feed and publicly proclaim that “Black Lives Matter” when questioned but don’t understand the necessity of the discomfort that many of us are currently facing. We shouldn’t want life to go back to “normal.”

My parents fall firmly within that category. I don’t say that to throw them under the bus or to frame them as heartless; in fact, my father cares about people to a fault. But when my mother hears about another killing of an unarmed Black man on the news, she isn’t galvanized into action, and she doesn’t crack open Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. Instead, she furrows her brow, purses her lips and worries that the world will change. Because she and my father, like many other parents, siblings and friends who are first-generation immigrants, are unknowingly perpetuating racism. It’s not the overt, confederate flag-sporting kind; it’s much more subtle, ingrained after centuries of neocolonialism and decades of assimilation. It’s a side effect of the American myth, and it results in a dangerous form of inaction.

III. Skinny brown boy

My father came to this country when he was twenty-one for a master’s program at the University of Connecticut. He was short, 5’ 6” on a good day, and at 120 pounds the football players down the hall would lift him up with one hand behind their back as a party trick. He had a thick Indian accent, a bushy moustache above his top lip and had only heard about American life from stories and television. He had spent two decades almost exclusively studying, first to get a chance at college and then to beat out thousands of other students to even make it into an American program. So he stayed under the radar, laughed along as jokes were made at his expense and trusted what he was told. After all, there were thousands clamoring for his spot, and he wasn’t about to mess that up. As the years went on, his dream conformed to the American dream; he found himself with the suburban house, a yard and friendly neighbors with a dog.

My parents, like many first-generation immigrants, were taught to keep out of trouble, believe what they observed and do what’s necessary to be good at their jobs. But even now, after they’ve built a reputation and climbed corporate ladders, those years of “keep your head down” don’t just slip away. In their eagerness to build a better life for themselves and their families, many first-generation immigrants who now hold positions of influence and power sit idly by. It isn’t that they don’t care, it isn’t that they’re callous to the needs of others, but their entire notion of success has been built on conformity to the rules set by white men centuries before.

IV. Proximity

In his TED Talk, “We Need to Talk About Injustice,” civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson states that to solve problems, we have to get proximate. It’s a simple idea, but a profound one nonetheless: to create meaningful solutions you have to be close to them, you have to understand them. By extension, legislators and change-makers have to either be close to the issues themselves or, at the very least, surround themselves with individuals who are close to the problem at hand. Instead, it is usually straight, white men who write legislature about women’s reproductive rights, oil magnates who strip away environmental policy and police unions who decide the worth of a Black person’s life.

Proximity is a struggle for people like my parents as well. We live in a suburb ten minutes from a Trader Joe’s, I had weekly tennis lessons as a kid and I went to a prestigious boarding school in New England. When I got into a fender-bender a year ago, I wasn’t worried that I might lose my life; in fact, I never even had to exit my car. My family friends rarely go into the city; in fact, they are afraid to go into the city. They’ve been told that E. 55th is dangerous and most of the people living on that street are Black, they see mugshots of people convicted of crimes, and those people are Black. When the American dream you know from movies and television is mostly white, you unwittingly begin associating the negatives with the skin color. And as you avoid the areas you need to see and the people you need to meet, the problem becomes increasingly distant. Distance does not lead to action.

While this is not the only immigrant experience, it is important to recognize that shedding ingrained racism must be an active process.

V. Together

Back to Stonewall. According to Mark Segal, a witness to the riots and founder of the first New York City pride march, the Stonewall Riots led to a prolific shift in the demographics surrounding LGBTQ+ activism. “Before Stonewall, you had organizations that only allowed white people who were properly dressed to ‘represent’ the [gay] community,” Segal said. After Stonewall, however, organizations began accepting people into the organization from all races, political viewpoints, and gender identities. The face of gay rights was no longer white.

If you type “Stonewall” into Google though, you’ll be greeted by a custom pride-flag that spans the top of your browser. The Stonewall Riots have endured as a turning-point in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. But this cheery appearance belies the intensity of their struggle and glosses over the huge backlash these protestors faced from all directions. Newspapers ran headlines like “Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad” and articles that referred to the Stonewall Inn as a place where “they could congregate, drink, dance and do whatever little girls do.” Gay men were referred to as “faggots” and the lesbian woman who cried out as she was beaten was referred to as, “the dyke who police had difficulty keeping in a patrol car.”

Race and LGBTQ+ activism have been inextricably linked for decades. As the national conversation shifts to discuss entrenched racism and inequality, we remember that today’s LGBTQ+ rights would be nonexistent without the involvement of people of color. And we can no more talk about race without also paying attention to the history of gender and sexual expression. When the attention fades, it is up to students to continue learning and making sure that the history of today is not over-simplified.

When we march and shout the names of those killed, we have to remember not to leave any out. The faces of Black Lives Matter are varied; they include gay and lesbian and trans and queer people of color and so many others. So, please, don’t stop here. Don’t let this be the conclusion. Don’t forget their names.

Illustration by Faith Lasley