"Not Visibly Czech"

Of Course I Am Going To Talk About Race 

     The title of this post was something someone said to me while we were eating, regarding the undue amounts of attention the cohort I was traveling with was getting, myself in particular. Also, in the program, I think there are only four Black girls, with three in the film program, and only one other Black guy (I could be wrong, I did not ask for his ethnic background but it isn't visually obvious), while I am the only one in the film program. In one of the videos showed during orientation, it was stated that arguably 90% of the Czech Republic's population is ethnically Czech. I am not seeing the entire country, and I am staying in a tourist locale, but even then, it is a very white country. I believe I listed this as one of my worries in my first blog post about this experience. I am not going to ruminate too heavily on the ways this manifests in my day-to-day interactions, but rather, on the insidious manner it colors my interpretation of the world around me.

People in Prague stare, a lot.

They stare for whatever reasons, like if someone is talking on the tram, for example. I have gotten a decent number of stares, and I stare back. Why? Because the position of the watcher is always one of power. It is voyeuristic. It is also a challenge, and if it goes unacknowledged I am allowing them to casually carry on from their removed perch of superiority. Staring back shows that I am not an object of attention, that I, too, have a gaze, a piercing one that I am unafraid to use.

....but what if they're not staring at me because of that? I can't know for certain if I don't ask, right? This back-and-forth of what if is what has colored the more questionable interactions I have had since I came into my racial socialization.

Take, for example, this morning: It honestly looked like two different grown men took photos of me on their phones within a 10 minute span. And I am not the type to press someone about this and make a scene. So maybe they just happened to have their cameras pointed in my direction and were looking at the screen, right? And so the cycle continues. It's a dizzying gaslighting sequence that I could go without, but I know that there are far too many people that feel a similar way, in one way or another. Let me apologize ahead of time if I am overstepping my bounds, but from what I have heard from a number of my women friends, it is like how their interactions with men are colored a certain way. With this all in mind, Black women deserve exponentially more credit than they are given.

Truth is, you get used to it and get used to the world around you. At home, abroad, wherever, white supremacy is an ailment of our societies, and the cure has to be brought out from within.

So I stare back, random person in a restaurant, wherever we are, because I take pride in you sheepishly smiling and looking away, knowing that I've won, I've made you look me in the eyes and realize that there is a real person, 20 years of life, highs and lows, love and loss, looking right back at you and your own life.