Are you WOKE yet?
While growing up, I didn’t know what racism meant except that my highly educated father would come home with quarters in his ratty pants’ pockets. He bagged groceries and often carried bags to the vehicle, and customers gave me a quarter or two. And if they were generous, Abba got a dollar.
In the late 1970s in Memphis, few people looked like us, so being stared at was expected, especially if my mother, wearing a sari with her head covered, joined us. Our two-bedroom apartment smelled of curry and chai, and from miles away, that smell guided me home.
Abba loved America and had memorized every patriotic phrase; at least, that is how I remembered him. I listened to his rant about the American dream and how we could be anything with a good education. America was the land of opportunity. Ironically, Abba never benefited from those opportunities due to his skin color and accent.
My cynicism towards equal opportunity didn’t surface back in the early years when my family struggled to survive. Or when my father failed countless times to find a suitable job, even with two separate MAs from American universities.
I also believed in the American dream, and I still do on many levels. I am just more WOKE these days.
Shortly after the Iran hostage crisis ended, Abba died of a sudden heart attack. My sisters and I got low-paying service jobs, and our financial woes continued well past my college years. I knew how to get food stamps and what time of the day to stand in line for free food, clothing, and other essentials.
Nowadays, my sisters and I are financially stable and, in many ways, are living the American dream. But receiving equal opportunity as my white counterparts is far from our reality.
In my experience, job markets and employers with woken conversations surrounding diversity, equality, and inclusion are often just conversations that lack much substance. Though I appreciate the gesture, women of color are frequently left feeling tokenized and re-exploited, especially when lived experience is added to the hiring criteria.
As a survivor of sexual exploitation, my experience and my “relatability” to other victims and survivors of exploitation have benefited my white female counterparts in their pursuit to “rescue” us. White women claiming to prevent the exploitation and marginalization of women of color are often the ones who hold the gavel. White women, who usually are outraged by the white men’s power, fail to recognize their colored counterparts who are in the bottle of the totem pole.
We often get so caught up in voicing the injustice that we experience that we do not recognize the injustice that we cause. Are you WOKE yet?
