When I arrived, I was afraid. I’ve been overseas, but I’ve never done so alone. Generally, I have time to do a host of research regarding where I’m staying, what I think I’ll be doing, should plans change, I study freeways, major intersections, and landmarks. Not this time, I got on the plane, and there I was for the time being, alone.
Am I really here? This is all too surreal. I began looking into faces for a reflection of my own existence. I’d seen this place on TV. The Olympics, Oprah, the people who’s skin is aubergine, jeeps, and red clay.
I had the expectation that I would see many a white people (white as in complexion because they look different from the white folks at home), and aboriginals. I saw whites, aboriginals (not in the “traditional”sense, more on that later), everyone else, and even those that I’d never seen before.
I would have liked to have prided myself on having left the block, but these facial features and social patterns defy rubric. I sound like someone’s 16th-century Conquistador rather than a Black woman from Oakland California circa 89’. Please be advised my brain is rapidly expanding.
Where I am from we are taught black and white. There are sharp contrasts in demographics. Although we interact with the spectrum, others just seem to fall off the grid.
One, the other, or invisible.
But here, everyone lives here.
It is here that I recognize the limitations on my side of the world.
America esteems its self with slogans like, “the most powerful country in the civilized world, the land of opportunity, the best (the rest of the world realizes not the brightest), a mosaic (formerly known as the melting pot, but that stopped being politically correct one day).
Same song, dance, stage, bright lights, and a dwindling audience. American inclusion looks like providing others with the opportunity to purchase tickets to the show. I know a few people that ain’t buying.
I arrived in Australia to realize that I haven’t seen the half. I am writing to document the fact that my brain auto defaulted to classifying people according to American racial standards. Here it became clear that I use race to combat fear. Fear of others reactions to my form.
We often come to conclusions for others. What we feel they think they know about us. We justify stereotypes to avoid hypothetical feelings that live down the road. No one was checking for me in Australia because there are so many kinds of people. Of course you are different.
I will not deny that I felt something brewing under the surface. I just wanted to make sure that it wasn’t my own paranoia. I asked myself to consciously accept the unknown. Or fanaticize that there isn’t one world order/ the “man” didn’t follow me here. For a moments time I was allowed to return to a childlike state. The state of being that exists before you are taught, “stranger danger!” Drop the American guard, try and become a world citizen, whatever that means.
I write this to say understanding comes from engagement rather than preconceptions. I am still programmed to see things certain ways but I want to log the moments when I receive universal truths regarding acceptance, generations in my personal reality, and the fact that everyone is doing the best they can most of the time.