Maria Vargas’s Reviews > For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color > Status Update

We did not create anti-Indigenous sentiment; we were taught it, we were forced to accept it, and then we internalized and perpetuated it on our own. That is the insidious nature of colonization. Many people have survived by assimilating toward the dominant group’s values, and this internalized racism continues to traumatize entire nations.

As a non-Black and also a non-white person, I am often prompted to pick a race category that does not include me. I am either given a white or black box to check, and I did not always understand where I belonged.

Your laugh carries liberation in it.