More than a “person of color”

I have a brown body but I am more than a person of color.


I have seen a lot of advocacy that one-dimensionalizes people like me so I ask you to think about the layers that exist within BIPOC communities (beyond gender, sexual orientation, and disability).

I ask you:

Are you an American citizen? Are your parents?

Do you have a conventional/European name? Do your parents?

Can you work legally in the United States? Can your parents?

Do you speak English? Fluently? Without an accent? Do your parents?

Do you have access to education? Did your parents?

Do you have a license and own a car? Do your parents?

Do you have a close relationship with your culture? Do your parents?

This country wasn’t just designed for white non-disabled heteronormative cis men. It was designed for citizenship to be the biggest ticket for human rights. It was designed to only communicate effectively with English speakers. It was designed to be a “melting pot” that awards assimilationism and punishes foreignness.

It was designed to put Americans first, and I see some anti-immigrant sentiment lurking into BIPOC advocacy. This perpetuates our oppression and erases our experience.

If your advocacy tells me to keep my head down because British colonialism oppression comes first, then I don’t want it. We won’t dismantle white supremacy until we acknowledge that it exists in a global context.

I’m not here to play oppression olympics. I’m here to say that immigrants have a layer of generational trauma to unpack that often goes unrecognized because we were raised to not make noise & fit in so we can survive.

We need to start recognizing this if we’re really fighting for collective liberation. I have a brown body but I am more than just a person of color.