So this is what it's called... hmmmm... interesting. I have experienced this so much and my daughter experiences more even though she is somewhat darker than me. I am too brown to be light skin, but too caramel to be dark skin. It is a very hard space to navigate among women but even harder to navigate among men. In the work space it hinders us reagrdless and among family it forces us to have nicknames based on our skin color while our lighter skin family members just have something based on theri personality or something they did when they were young.

Makes me think about the drastic difference between the supermarket and stores in my town compared to the ones in the inner city, or even parts of Mount Vernon and Yonkers. How the price for food in my town is so much more expensive then in those areas. About how when you walk through the aisles I don't think I see the stickers that read WIC APPROVED on them. How the selection of meat and ethnic products is little to none. However when you go to the supermarket in "the hood" it is completely different, the prices are dropped some, the WIC APPROVED sticker is almost everywhere, and the selection of EVERYTHING is wider.

Let's take for example the homeless. They choose to gather in communities with fellow unhoused people because they are not degraded, they feel a sense of belonging, and they know the person next to them in that situation can relate. Those who don't suffer from mental illness choose not to engage with anyone outside of asking for financial assistance. However when those of us take our time to stop and speak with them, talk to them as though we don't see the fact that they are unhoused we quickly see a brightness in them and their relateable side appears. The side of them before being unhoused. When treated with dignity they quickly stand tall and remember for that moment they are not their situation.

This makes me think about where I grew up as a child in the South Bronx. About how the crack and cocaine epidemic struct my community and forced them into oppression and until this day they haven't been able to pull themselves out of it. Instead of establishing programs for them to get clean and thrive they placed programs that help them stay addicted and complacent to the drug addicted lifestyle they live.