When i say i’m actively engaged in my own decolonization, this is what i mean:
I question my subordination. I shake off the fog of complacency when i feel it settling around me and seek to stand in the unrelenting, unforgiving light of the truth. Give me TRUTH or give me death – for liberty is an illusion to the oppressed, the poor, the colored people in this nation. Give me CONSCIOUSNESS or I AM dead.
When i’m succeeding, i make a conscious effort to evaluate the world around me, to interrogate the norms of the dominant society i’m slowly becoming immersed it. And i stir the fucken pot. i talk about my gang culture roots. i talk about the imprisonment of my childhood friends, the school to prison pipeline. Even when its uncomfortable, even when i’m at a charity auction surrounded by proprietors and CEOs, i will not let comments about shooting homeless people go without rebuttal.
Yes, homeless people can be a nuisance to business owners – yes, its unfair that neither the police nor our government do anything to create real solutions to help said business owners (never mind actually helping the homeless!). But lets talk about our broken mental health system, since 20% of all homeless are mentally ill. Let’s talk about addiction – about how there is a stronger link between childhood trauma and addiction than there is between obesity and diabetes.
I won’t lie – its a struggle. The part of my psyche that remains enslaved – the part of me that wants to recede into Plato’s proverbial cave, the part of me that prefers the shadows on the wall – begins to wonder… “those homeless people could stand if they really wanted to. I did. I made it. i’m here now. Maybe it is about survival of the fittest. Maybe i am fit to be at this very table.” But one look around and I understand once more. In a room of maybe 300 people, i see very few Latinos – mostly the servers. I see one Black man behind the bar carrying an ice bucket; no black waiter uniform for him. He’s in regular clothes, out of the line of sight.
I shake off the fog. I stand in the unforgiving light and read the writing it illuminates on the wall: “Five hundred years of oppression by the winning race, by the dominant White race, has crippled – emotionally and mentally – Blacks and Latinos, and Asians, and all other POCs who lost the arms race, the land grab, and all their resources. That is why we are so underrepresented at this gala. The people at this table, they are kind, they are smart, they are my friends. But they don’t understand… so, let’s talk about mental illness and drug addiction.”
So i did.
...según esta chicana 