IGNORE THE IGNORANCE - WOMEN HISTORY MONTH

Growing up my mother told me: Not only you are the daughter of a black woman but you were born female too, which means you will have to work 10x harder than the black man who already works 10x harder than the white man to reach your goals.

I was born in Italy and through preschool, kindergarten and 2 first years of elementary school, I was with the same kids and did not know that I was different until we moved to Switzerland. 

 I was one of the best and most talented students in school, but the career adviser told me to be a Gardner or Bicycle Mechanic. Being very innocent, I never saw it as racism but as their stupidity for not seeing how smart I was. No disrespect to the profession but I would never go study to be a Gardner. The other kids waited for me every day to beat me. I let them hit me  for 3 years until asylum seekers from the Yugoslavian war came to my school and got treated just the same. That is when I realized, that I was not the problem and decided to fight back. It took me a while to understand that people have an agenda when they want to get to know you. 

I started dancing ballet at the age of 4. When I was 12 years old, my teacher took me to a talent evaluation event. The talent scouts told me that I had so much talent, but unfortunately I looked too different from other ballerinas that it would be too difficult for me to become one. They could tell that I was developing into an "exotic" woman and most ballerinas don't have that much shape. They told me that if I liked to be around dancers, I should become a make up artist. I felt so insulted by that. Why would I want to have a profession that reminds me of what I could never have. When a blond friend of mine, who had a really big behind for a ballerina made it into the school that I dreamed to go to, I simply believed that she was better then me. 

Fighting for my dreams, I have heard it all: "A woman can't..."; "A woman won't..."; "A woman is not strong enough to do what a man does"; "You have to be my b**ch to be famous"; "You will never make it without me"; "You are too sensitive for this industry"...

I was beaten, I was insulted, I was hated, I was spit on, I was humiliated but guess what: 

I AM STILL HERE WITH A BIGGER SMILE THAN EVER!!!

Now, I hear sentences like: It's easier when you are pretty like you.... Is it? Are you sure that I am even pretty? Until recently I did not know that I was even good enough for this world. My hair was too big and I was too different. It feels pretty awful to be judged every day by my look and gender being pushed around by people who's only intention is to judge and hate me. There is no privilege being me, because everywhere I go to I do not belong. Even my family calls me names because I am different than all of them. In Brazil I don't belong to the black race because my skin is not dark. My own fam calls me "gringa", a not so nice word for foreigner. In the US blacks don't like me because I am light skinned and in Italy they call me colored.
I put a smile on and ignore the ignorant.

Today, I know I am beautiful... It is not my looks that make me but who I am that shapes me.  Today, I know I am valuable and deserve to fight for my dreams because God does not know any limitation. Today, I know that people will talk, but they do not know better than God. If I was created this way, there is nothing wrong with me. If I was created this way, God's intention was for me to be me and to bring change because I have temper, discipline and a fighting spirit. 

There is no way I am supposed to be but the way God made me!

Conception of Black and prejudice

In Brazil, a person's "race" is based primarily on physical appearance. In Brazil it is possible for two siblings of different colors to be classified as people of different races. Children who were born to a black mother and a European father would be classified as black if their features read as African, and classified as white if their features appeared more European.With no strict criteria for racial classifications, lighter-skinned mulattoes were easily integrated into the white population, introducing a large proportion of African blood in the white Brazilian population, as well as a large proportion of European blood in the black population. This system is very different from that found in the United States, which had defined concepts of race due to the one drop rule so that people with any known African ancestry were automatically classified as Black, regardless of their skin color. Thus, many Black Americans have some degree of European ancestry, while few white Americans have African ancestry