KMarie Tejeda, MDiv candidate and a seminarian at Memorial Church, delivered the following remarks at Morning Prayers in Harvard's Memorial Church on September 25, 2019.
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Let us pray,
Lord, here we are seeking your presence and ready to hear what you have to say on this day. Here we are with hearts and minds wide open to change. Give us the courage to love one another as you have loved us. Take away the things you dislike; and help us to create a better world where love, tolerance, curiosity, and peace reigns forever and ever. Amen.
Good morning!
The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?
The Lord is with me; He is my helper.
(Psalm 118:6-7)
I am not afraid because I know that God is with me. However, I am fearful of human’s judgments and the decisions they can make about me because of how I look [my skin color], or because of how I talk [my Spanish accent].
Moving to Boston has been a wakeup call. As some of you know, I was born and raised in the Dominican Republic, and then I moved to New York when I was a young adult. While living in the Dominican Republic, I never had to see myself as a minority or even as a colored person. Everyone there was like me, mixed. My understanding of race was very different and limited, and understanding how much race plays an important role in American society has been a profound and painful cultural shock for me. I never expected that in a first world country, I was going to encounter racism and discrimination the way I’ve seen it here. There have been moments when I have felt demoralized and disrespected because sometimes, I’ve been seen as less than a person.
Let me explain. Since I moved to the States,
- First, I had to put myself into a category, category that until today’s date, it is hard for me to identify with: A brown person.
- Second, I’ve had to call myself a minority and learn that, because I am considered as such, sometimes, I will be followed in certain places as a result of the prejudice that some people might have about us.
- Third, I’ve had to learn that sometimes, there are places where I will just be ignored, and my voice won’t be heard because, somehow, I got superpowers and became Invisible Woman.
- Fourth, I’ve had to learn to deal with the pain when approaching to some people and, even though they are smiling at me, their facial expression conveys despise and surprise because a person of color is asking them a question. I wonder if they are thinking: Don’t you know the limits?
- Finally, I’ve had to learn to be silent when I do not feel comfortable because of fear. Fear of being seeing as the minority girl that always causes problems, to be seen as the girl that doesn’t get it, as the girl that the majority do not understand because she does not think or look like them.
Now, not only, I have to be aware of my surroundings because I am a woman, now, I also have to be mindful of where I go, my role in society, how I see myself, and how others perceive me. Perception that sometimes will not be based on the person who I am, but based on the color of my skin or my ethnicity.
So, as I said before, I am not afraid because I know that God is with me; nonetheless, I am afraid of what humans can do to me based on what they think minorities are.
See, humans have free agency to make decisions, and most of the time, their decisions are NOT made on what God’s intentions are. People make decisions based on their life experiences, biases, prejudices, racism, and what they think people should or should not do, or even more on what they believe people should or should not BE. I know that like me, there are many.
Therefore, today, I invite us to think about our role within society. I invite you to think about how we can work together to make a better world, to start building a world where future generations can live together surrounded by peace and understanding of different cultural and ethnical ways of expressions. A world where what matters in society is the person and not the color of their skin or ethnical background.