I don’t mean I pass for white, nobody ever mistook me for being white, but I have been mistaken for: Puerto Rican, Dominican, Brazilian, Cuban and all sorts of Brown ethnicities. Hell, i’m mistaken for latina, more than i’m identified as Black American. (the older I get, the lighter i get, it’s a thing).
Watching videos like the one below, I keep thinking about what my life would be today, if instead of moving to DR, i had moved back to the US as I had planned… only money stopped me after all.
I don’t have to imagine too hard after all, this is somewhat why I fled haiti with barely the clothes on my back.
I imagine, being grabbed on the streets and my kid not knowing what the heck happened to me or where I was. Do you know there was a time in Haiti that Nate stuck to me like crazy glue? Once he was sick, and I was getting ready to go and buy him meds, and he started getting dressed, i asked him what he was doing and he said “if you go, I go, they take us both, they kill us both, but i’m not going to live without you”. He was 9.
See, you see all these images, videos, read the stories, and you all feel somekind of way about them, anger, pity, rage, sadness… but you most of you don’t feel the fear, the visceral fear that brown people are now living through in the US. Including the absolute trauma, latino children are experiencing.
When we moved to DR, in our new apartment, we slept in the living room, for almost a year, before Nate felt safe enough, secure enough to move into his room.
There’s a reason you won’t ever see me doing the FAFO or They deserve this… because no one deserves this. No one, deserves to live in fear of being kidnapped and beaten and disappeared. No child deserves to live even 1 day wondering where their parents are and how they are going to live the rest of their lives without them. Please note, that I am not saying for you to feel the same way I do. You’ve not lived what i’ve lived, so I don’t expect anyone to feel the same as I do. But do me a favor, don’t voice your objections on this entry. For me.
My life has taken me on so many journeys, in so many different lands, i’ve been a minority in one, comfortable, dirt poor, i was an orphan but with parents, i’ve live in majority white countries, and in majority Black countries, i’m not the darkness Black, i’m not the slightest… it’s seems i’m always just in the middle of something, not quite one, not quite the other and it’s been both a curse and a blessing as Monk would say.
No Longer Hidden
Silence once met our cries, our demands for accountability
Silence today rolls down your eyes, bearing witness to our truth
As the hate we spoke of, today preys upon you
As today you can no longer deny the basis of our cries
Today despite the masks, hate is revealed fully grown
Yesterday, hate rode the streets, barefaced unnoticed
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All our warnings on deaf ears fell, in isolation we dwelled
Your cries today go unheeded, just as ours have always been
Today the price is being paid, by those you hold most dear
Silence today rolls down your face, bearing witness to your pain
As hate no longer hidden, but today unleashed
Strolls through your neighborhoods and your life
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Evil has been given sway, over all of our lives today
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#TheAmericanHaitianPoet #Woke #SocialPoetry
Paypal.me/murielvieux (to help Haitian families in crisis)
Muriel Vieux – June 23rd, 2025 – ©All rights reserved
