I Feel My Color, I Am My Color: The profound words that gave meaning to an elusive idea
Originally posted on Medium on Mar 14, 2022
“I Feel My Color, I Am My Color”
The profound words that gave meaning to an elusive idea
I am currently flying home back to Seattle after traveling to Detroit. I went to Detroit as a surprise visit to support my very close friend and colleague Michaela Ayers, the Founder of Nourish. If you don’t know who she is, you need to. Michaela just launched her podcast, Black Her Stories. I’ve been fortunate enough to witness all the renditions and evolutions of Black Her Stories. It initially started as an in-person event where the Black women of today reflected on the Black women of the past who influenced them. These in-person events included a beautiful slide show. During the pandemic, it shifted into a virtual event where the stories were shared with the integration of videos. And now, it has shifted again into a podcast format with an in-person event with sound.
The conversation was focused on Detroit Black women and the city itself at the Listening Party of the podcast launch. I was exhilarated, inspired, and saddened by the women who came to the launch. Why exhilarated and inspired? I met a woman named Jazmyn who moved to Detroit from Minneapolis. She was able to capture an elusive feeling for me that I’ve experienced many times but had no words for. She said, “In Minneapolis I felt my color, in Detroit, I FEEL my color.” My eyes opened wide and my mind sighed. Wow! This is how I often felt growing up in Iowa. I felt my color every day in the white spaces I grew up. Often I was “the only” and was “othered” more often than not. In Seattle, I can and AM my color because I am in a place where I can feel it as part of something rather than because I am outside of something being surrounded by the diversity of Asian cultures.
Why was I saddened? I met a Black woman who lived in Seattle for over 3 years and was just starting to find her community before recently moving to Detroit. For her, Seattle is like Iowa was for me. She felt her color in the White spaces in Seattle predominately created not for her. I often have heard this from my Black friends. How they never get to be themselves and how they always felt their color. The reason for the sadness is that my reality of Seattle, where I found joy and community, many found isolation, was consistently the only and was othered.
I will be sitting with this thought and idea for a while as I don’t know what I’m trying to process yet. However, it hit me deeply enough to break out of my blog writing hiatus to write this. To my BIPOC community, I guess I would love to hear from you. Where have you been forced to have your color be felt while other places allowed you to feel and be your color?
