The idea of belonging is so often conflated with inconspicuousness. It’s believed that belonging is the same as not standing out.
So many young Black bodies wish nothing more than to be invisible, finally free of scrutiny and denigration. Peers can change their hair, clothes, and even way of speaking as a means to stand out, and be seen. This act of being seen is normal, inescapable, for some of us. It is something we can’t run away from. Questions of where you come from, requests to touch your hair, and a litany of other forms of being othered make being seen feel all too personal and invasive.
In theory, a world where none of us stood out would be incredible, but it would also be a painfully boring existence, where all of us would be stripped of the characteristics and quirks that make us the individuals we are today. We are all so clearly different and beautiful, but generations of social conditioning have told us that some of us are simply “more different.” In a world where our differences are disproportionately assessed, the struggle to find your place and belong becomes all the more difficult. My journey of belonging is still evolving, but like many things, glimpses of it tell me I am almost certainly on the right path.
I went to the Dominican Republic with the hopes of bettering my Spanish and safely making it to all of the destinations outlined in my itinerary. Upon arrival, I realized, at least subconsciously, that there might have been a larger mission at hand. I had stepped into a world of true belonging. My familial background and physical attributes declared to other Dominicans that I was, in fact, Dominican. For me, this was a sigh of relief. I hadn’t realized I had spent most of my life under a societal microscope in my interactions with others. Well-meaning questions peering into my genetic makeup had unknowingly worn a hole into my spirit. With each inquiry into who I was, my response became less and less of a statement and more of a question.
In a language other than my mother tongue, I found myself communicating with an older woman as though she were my own grandmother. Despite a world of differences that could have just as easily kept us apart, I could sense the sincerity in her eyes and words. I made sense in her world. At that moment, I realized that growing up, due to circumstances out of anyone’s hands, that the same might not have been said for some of my young classmates. How could my lips be so big? Why was I able to hide pencils in my hair? These are questions we brush off, but they smudge as hard as we try to wipe clean.
Whatever reality, I was cleansed in the air and waters of the DR. Of course, my lack of fluency in the language and cultural background as an American just as quickly made me stand out as my race would in another country. Yet still, the curiosity cast my direction was worlds away from the kind of hostility that I could just as easily face walking into the wrong neighborhood in the United States. I left knowing deep down that something transformative had occurred, and it’s no coincidence that so many pieces of my life fell into place after this trip.
To find belonging is to find peace within oneself. It’s in finding this freedom and finally being seen beyond the color of my skin that I realized how long I had been sold a lie. It’s a lie that many still perpetuate in their ideas that “not seeing color” will somehow erase the world’s injustices.
I want you to see me. I want you to see the ways we differ. That doesn’t mean I want your sympathy, or to be talked down to about what my experience is or isn’t.
I want to know that, god forbid, you will step up in a situation where my race does matter. A shared post won’t stop me or another person from being another statistic, another hashtag, or another life cut short. Your voice and privilege, in the heat of the moment, however, will.
There is, within me, an unease now, in noticing the signs of fake acceptance. You realize a lot of people won’t claim you once tough questions are asked, and lines are drawn. Once you have lived without the constraints of conditional love it can be almost impossible to place yourself back in those confines. Guilt, without any reparations, is a stench we can all smell, and plenty are in dire need of a wash.
Perhaps we will one day reach a place where curiosity is the emotion people first jump to when faced with someone different from them. A curiosity that doesn’t prey on others, but lifts them up, and provides a space for everyone to learn. A curiosity that says you belong, not how did you get in. The need to ask what someone did to deserve unfair treatment will be replaced with deserved outrage. Bystanders will finally step in, instead of watching as another human being is permanently silenced.
I think the feeling of belonging is something so valuable, and it’s something we can share with each other, in the smallest ways. My encounter with belonging is something I carry with me, and it is likely what ties me to many of you. For that reason, I say it just as well starts in the communities that we already identify with; the people that we might not even realize we’ve left on the frays. We differ and connect in more meaningful ways than our eyes allow us to detect, and those unseen pieces matter far more than we realize.