The Truth Still Hurts, but… You Can Handle It.

Sarah Fulton
Nov 5 · 11 min read

This might earn me some hate mail. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Preface: I wrote the first and last article I’d ever publish over one full year ago. I had just returned from my quest to find information on my birth mother in Seoul, South Korea. The outcome was by no means, a fairy-tale ending. But the lesson was, that although my father abandoned us before I was born and my mother ensured by law that I would never know her, I realized that who I was really looking for… was Myself. One year of deep, devout, soul-searching later: I still don’t know who in the entire fuck I am. But today, after a seething year chock-full of frustration, I figured out why.

I’m pissed. All the time. And no, it’s not because of Donald Trump- not even in the least — (him being racist, orange and stupid, bores me. That’s what he is. We get it already.) I’m pissed because I’ve admitted that I’m pissed, and I’m ready to stop being pissed, but I can’t pinpoint why I’m SO pissed. It’s infuriating.

I mean, there’s obviously a lot of things to be pissed about in this country- I’ve definitely been pissed at pretty much every racial/ religious/ socio-economic group for being fundamentally arrogant. The arrogance is all in the same manner- but just in their respective corners. There’s a lot of: “my suffering is worse than your suffering (but high-key, I have zero insight into your suffering because I don’t care to relate to you since you’re different)” going on and it’s just arrogant all around. I’m pissed at Instagram- it’s indisputably awful… and omnipresent. I’m pissed at corporations. Every big brand I’ve ever worked at has been so corrupt it’s made the news (and now my resume that once dazzled with “badges of honor” looks like a Wikipedia list of corporate scandals). Naturally, I’m pissed at the entertainment industry as a whole. It’s fake as fuck. Enough said.

But that’s not really why I’m pissed.

Lol.

They say the underlying emotion of Anger is feeling powerless. And I’m angry because after thinking I was done with going through two traumatizing identity crises- the first being abandonment at birth, the second being the adopted Korean girl engulfed by a sea of White people- I’m now going through yet, another identity crisis. But this time, I’m not an abandoned infant (who was ultimately, rescued) or the slanty-eyed child (who was, at the time, colorblind to race). I’m now a very color-conscious adult who’s fully realized, I have no cultural identity. I am tribe-less.

In high school, my first relationship, first true love happened to be with a Black man. We were kids and genuine friends first, then dated for almost seven years until we were 22. He introduced me to Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Maya Angelou and Angela Davis. He was the first to show me Menace II Society, Poetic Justice and The Chappelle Show. He invited me to his family parties where I had candied yams for the first time and everyone DANCED (white people don’t do that and/or they don’t do it well. We all know this.) I truly admired him, he truly adored me and we were in love. In our seventh year, he choked me and flung me into a wall of landscape rocks. It was violent and devastating. My soul, shattered. We were both in shock (we were still honestly, just kids) and our relationship crumbled. I moved across the country.

Once we officially broke up, I forever looked for him in other men. He was my first love. In my first year of living in New York City, I joined an activist group that “empowered communities of color through the arts” and most poignantly advocated against the Prison Industrial Complex by working with high school minors who were incarcerated at Rikers Island. I produced performance art shows with an all people of color crew that accepted me right away and several members became my close friends. Two years into working with them, I was told that White people weren’t allowed to join for a number of reasons. I quit. I don’t believe in racially discriminating against anyone- especially if they are offering support to undermine racial discrimination. I get the reasons for excluding them. But I highly disagree. And that’s that.

During my first few years in New York, I would date my second boyfriend for three and a half years and my third boyfriend, the following three years. They were both Black. Both of them grew up in the Bronx during the 90’s. Hip Hop was inherently part of who they were. They liked that I resonated with Hip Hop. I heard prose that were heartbroken, but poetry that was Lionhearted. It was honest and angry accompanied by instrumental melodies that made me cry. But it was triumphant, victorious and heroic. “I fell in love with Hip Hop” in my early 20’s (it was a personal marriage of Kanye’s Late Registration and Lauryn Hill’s Unplugged albums that had me at hello). But living in New York introduced and captivated me with the classics: I listened on repeat to Reasonable Doubt, The Dynasty, Illmatic, The Infamous, Ready to Die, Big L, Black Star, The Lox, and Rakim, every minute of every day, riding the 1, 2, E and F trains throughout the boroughs for over a decade. Since I moved to LA, when I’m back in New York, I often still put on 22 2’s, D’evils, Umi Says and Ebonics when I ride from Brooklyn into the city just for nostalgia purposes. I’m still a huge patron of live music and one of my greatest joys in life has been providing artists both local performance and mass media opportunities. Hip Hop has saved my life a grand total, of 4 times.

This year, I felt like, Hip Hop choked me and flung me into a wall of landscape rocks. It felt violent and devastating.

This topic is a slippery slope, especially since I’m “Not Black” - I know, I KNOW. Trust me, it’s been made very clear to me by Black people, good friends and strangers alike. But let’s just say, I’m not a rookie when it comes to understanding Hip Hop and Black politics in America. I care. And it hurts.

But Hip Hop has become so commercially exploited, and triggered intense racial divisiveness, that it feels wholly unsafe to have a voice in, as a “Non” Black or Latino person. And those who know me- know- I’ve never been afraid to speak my mind. I’ve worked in the Hip Hop industry on and off for the past four years- in the entertainment industry for 12, and I’ve experienced enough professional atrocity to oust several celebrities and network executives if I really wanted to. Which I don’t-- calm down. They know who they are.

In terms of my love for “the Culture”… I’ve stepped away. I’ve been told one too many times, that my help is unwanted. That my privilege disqualifies my ability to see “the struggle”. I’ve always said that I understand so much, that I understand I could never understand. But I’m done being in spaces that some how, some way, constantly let me know that I’ll never really belong because I’m basically… White.

One of the reasons why I resonated with Black culture so specifically, is because well.. first of all, I’m not White. No, I’m not Black either, but I’m definitely not White (trust me, they make that very clear as well). I am, however, incredibly blessed to be adopted into an affluent family with parents who are liberal and honestly open to learning and embracing multi-cultural perspectives. I am irrefutably privileged and have benefited from White privilege since I was six months old. I am humbled by the unfairly advantaged opportunities of worldwide travel that my parents gave me, making it possible for me to ever have the perspective I have today. But I’ve never felt White and I’ve damn sure never wanted to be White, or Black, or any other ethnicity than what I am.

At various points in my life, I’ve wanted to have bigger eyes and a smaller nose, yes. I wanted to NOT be stared at with obviously negative connotation, questioned with moronic assumptions and constantly singled-out in every single room. In junior high, I wanted the guys to like me as much as they liked the White girls. But I’ve never identified with being White. At first it was because, it was boring and flavorless to me. But as I grew older, it was because it became quite apparent, that White people are historically and anthropologically proven, to be the Oppressor. They are the architects of mass racial bias- the social constructors of racism. The European colonizers stole lands, claimed absolute power and enslaved the world. America is dominated and continues to be operated by White oppression of all others. I’m done tip-toe-ing around the subject in fear of sounding politically incorrect. It IS politically correct because it’s the blaring, blatant truth. It’s disgusting, it’s evil and it needs to be said. Let it be known, that I hold this as a core belief.

As I became more involved with learning about the Prison Industrial Complex, I became more and more aware of how immensely wounded and abused Black people have been. Ironically, the more I learned of the generational trauma it has caused… I felt soulful belonging for the first time. It was the first place that I could relate the deep, internal despair I had always carried that no one else around me seemed to hold. As an adult, I now know that my innate sorrow stems from an early experience of abandonment, traumatic displacement, and an ever-lingering lack of belonging / knowing my roots. The connection finally makes sense.

What many are unaware of as well, is that South Korean culture has a viciously savage history of slavery that happened right within the 20th century. The Koreans as well, were gruesomely enslaved, tortured and oppressed- by the Japanese.

Beginning in the early 1900’s, the Imperial Japanese Empire colonized South Korea. This oppression horrifically amassed the executions/ torture and killings of millions, heavily inflicted forced labor, chemical/biological-weapon human experimentation, and systematic sexual slavery (over 500,000 Korean women were forced into prostitution facing up to 29 – 40 Japanese military men per day). It became a crime to teach Korean history from texts and Japanese authorities burned over 200,000 historical Korean documents. In 1940, 80% of Koreans legally changed their last names to Japanese, as Japan continued to seize and re-claim Korean buildings, agricultural resources, ancient artifacts and traditions as their own- essentially wiping out the historical memory of South Korea altogether. Koreans as a people and culture were mercilessly mutilated and have been severely traumatized throughout generations to this day.

Perhaps, I carry this sorrow in my blood as well. And perhaps, slavery- as offensively dark as it may sound- connects all of us who carry this ancestral aching so much more than we ever know (or care?) to acknowledge.

But then again-- socially speaking, I’m not looking to claim Korean culture as my “tribe” at all. I’m American. 100%, through and through. I do not speak Korean. I would never live in Asia (I’d never make it- I’m too loud, too outspoken, and I swear way too much which is not okay anywhere in the follow-the-rules-or-be-socially-CONDEMNED continent of the universe). I highly dislike monolithic communities. The one-race EVERYWHERE thing, has literally given me an anxiety attack every time I go.

So to bring it full circle, I’m pissed because… I don’t know where to go with my confused, non-tribal, non-black-white-latino-or-korean ass. I’ve tried the solitude route and although I do believe it is healthy to have time alone to know yourself and to exercise (annoying buzzword alert:) “self-love”, I believe even more, that in the end, we are not wired or created to be alone. Practicing self-love is really just a prerequisite to become eligible to selflessly, but healthily, love others- but no one ever talks about how this general requirement course, should actually be titled, “Self-Love 102: An Intro To Self-Hate.”

The truth about self-love, is that it comes hand in hand with self-loathing. A portion of loving oneself is recognizing all of our “good” qualities that “people” would applaud, pat us on the back and give us a gold star for. But the actual work is in admitting all of our “misfit” qualities that most of society would reject, criticize and condemn. Accountability is alas, an endangered species.

To make taking accountability even more difficult, you have religious and other cultural thought-leaders telling us to “only look at the positive”. To rebuke the negative. That “we create our own realities” by what we think, so according to the “law of attraction”, we should only think positive in order to receive the positive. These super corny constructs have become some of the most disturbingly poisonous and misguided methods of addressing conflict in human history.

No matter what religion you believe in, we are not God, “Himself” almighty. We are human. We are traumatized. We are flawed. We are broken. Any adult who says they’ve never been these things is lying.

Because we are traumatized, we carry darkness. If you were neglected or abused at any time in your life, feeling darkness because of it is… valid. If you were bullied, or silenced and you feel weak or powerless because of it, it is valid. If you were oppressed, denied access to solutions or systematically trapped in a life of denied opportunity because of the color of your skin and you feel angry, enraged or vengeful.. it is Valid.

By denying the parts of who we really are that have experienced pain, we are making our pain something that is wrong to feel. That our feelings that would naturally arise for any type of victim, are unacceptable. Or even worse, they are grounds for being rejected by human kind.

Avoiding or covering up our dark side is just as bad as if we were never to see the light. Both darkness and light are true aspects of who we are. Without seeing both, we can not fully accept or understand ourselves and therefore won’t be able to do that for others. Ignoring negativity is also toxic because it is avoiding and denying the Truth. The more you deny the truth, the more you deny who you really are. The more you deny who you are, the more you have no idea how much empathy you actually have to offer or how much pain you cause to yourself and to others.

Accepting your darkness in order to evolve from it, is the self-love that bleeds. The exploration of this is dark in there, pun intended, so it is indeed, rather difficult to know how to navigate at all. I’m still crawling.. but I do keep finding torches along the way.

So here I am again. After traveling the world in search of some better or magical solution that doesn’t exist, I’ve realized that America, the country that raised me and enrages me, is ultimately, the best place to be lost. I am currently taking a closer look at humility as well- to bow down to the fact, that I don’t have all the answers. No one does. But what we do have in this country, as infinitely opinionated as We, The People will always be… is Freedom. The freedom to be both light and dark. The freedom to tell each other that on the internet and publicize it for the entire world to receive and possibly, just possibly, help a fellow citizen of the world who feels estranged, feel more belonging. The freedom to actively engage down a path of both self-love and cross-cultural love. For now, although still lost, I will follow that path, continuing to discover my own unique truths along the way. As the notoriously both beloved, and simultaneously criticized, Barack Obama once said:

“For as long as I live, I will never forget, that in no other country on earth, is my story even possible”.

At least one thing I do know, is that this, along with my story I’ve shared today… is True.

“All I Know
is that I don’t Know
but I know what’s right for me

Truth is what I’m set on
It’s all I want to get on
I won’t stop until I’m Free.

The Deeper my Roots, The Higher my Reach
This is what I’ll strive to be
Don’t know the future setting
But know somewhat where I’m heading,
I won’t stop until,

I’m Free.”

-SF

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