My experience with storytelling in a white world as a mixed-race woman has been difficult. As a child in school I remember writing the most elaborate and colorful stories, my eyes gleaming with excitement. But they never made sense to my teachers. I was often shut down, told to follow more rules and put more things in boxes.

When I told my friends the stories of home - the magic that Colombia holds - they wouldn’t believe me. They would roll their eyes and invalidate my truths by saying things like “you’re so dramatic” or “you’re exaggerating”. After a while I started to learn the rules. In high school I became “well-spoken” and “highly literate”. I learned how to control my cadence, to lower the volume and intensity of my voice. To use the correct words. I desperately wanted to be heard.

By college, I thought I had the hang of it. I was concise and precise and my syntax was spot on. But this time they wanted sources. My professors and peers never believed me when I spoke from my heart, my most important source. They wanted peer-reviewed literature, citations, and quantifiable data to validate my own experiences. So I gave them that. I was almost always the only woman of color in my classrooms, so I had to leave a good impression.

One day at a former job I spoke up about the racism I was experiencing. As the only woman of color working there, I had no one to back me up. I had a few allies in that space but no one could speak to my lived experience. There was no white person to validate what I was going through. Maybe I was being dramatic, a word that has been used against me my entire life. Or maybe I was too emotional, a perfect reason to invalidate the truths I held. Instead of listening to me, my boss suggested we hire an individual that was trained in Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI). Someone who had the right certificates and could tell them whether or not the racism I was experiencing was real or imagined. And of course, it became my job to find this person.

A lifetime of these experiences is more than enough to make me want to stop sharing my truths. The type of code-switching that has been required of me my entire life deliberately erases the ways that my people tell stories. I am disrupting this by telling you that the lived experience of people of color is enough. We are experts in our traditions, stories, and knowledge. We are experts in the racism we experience, how we experience it, and what we can do about it. No one is more equipped than us to tell our own stories. Our lived experience is our expertise. When we talk, listen!

1. Divest from Worship of the Written Word

One of the main characteristics of white supremacy culture is worship of the written word. People of color from across the globe have oral traditions of passing down knowledge from one generation to the next through stories, songs, dances and more. One of the tools of western colonization is to invalidate oral histories by declaring that written history—preferably from a white male subject matter expert—is the only legitimate source of knowledge.

This way of thinking reduces our ability to share knowledge to binaries; there is a white—I mean, “right” way to share knowledge and a wrong way to share knowledge. The “right” way is through books and articles in peer reviewed journals where power is almost exclusively held by white men. But how could this be true when the People of the Global Majority have relied on oral traditions for thousands of year. This invalidates our knowledge and traditions. For a few of us, it forces us to learn to speak and write like white people. We have to adopt a language that is not our own just to be heard.

The systems of academia and other white sources of knowledge are purposefully made to exclude people of color, and most of us can’t break through the barriers—especially our elders who play an important role in sharing knowledge across generations.

Worship of the written word perpetuates the idea that white culture is the only correct culture. It uplifts white supremacy, because whoever controls the data controls the power. We must accept that there are many ways to share stories. People of color have shared oral knowledge for millennia. Our stories are rooted in science, poetry, history, and much more.

2. Whose Voices are Missing?

We live in an age where we need to have certificates from white institutions to give us permission to share our own stories. We need degrees and titles in order to share truths that are so fundamental to us that we carry them around in our bones. Who is more equipped to talk about racism: a white woman with a PhD from a white institution, or a Black man who has lived in his own skin his entire life?

In my academic and professional careers, I have had countless experiences where white people were in charge of JEDI education, social justice work, and teaching Indigenous knowledge. That is truly an act of modern-day colonization. We must be allowed to tell our own stories. Our voices must be included, not just in small ways, but in positions of power. We must be present in boardrooms, at conferences and summits, in film-making and writing, and at every other level of representation.

3. When We Talk, Listen.

The disenfranchisement of people of color is a direct and targeted attack to rob us of our stories, our knowledge, and our power. For centuries our stories have been stolen, only to be repackaged and sold right back to us.

What is your community’s story? What’s your story? Does it align with the stories you have been told about your people, the ones you’ve read in textbooks? Does it perpetuate stereotypes, oppression, or trauma? Does it highlight joy?

The next time a person of color tells you that they experience racism, believe them. Don’t try to quantify the level of racism experienced by asking for data in your own metrics. Just believe them. When you receive a story from a person of color, you receive a gift. The onus is on you to learn about our ways of storytelling to be able to receive it.

When We Talk, Listen!

1. Divest from Worship of the Written Word

2. Whose Voices are Missing?

3. When We Talk, Listen.