Dear Cishet Latinx/Xicanx, I’m Ready to Talk About Orlando
It was a Sunday morning, so I slept in late. My ma’s novelas in the background, freshly made tortillas with carnitas and arroz, my dad watching a soccer game in my parents’ room. Sunday morning rituals.
Get up, stretch, wash face, brush teeth, take medicine, hug my mom and say hi to my dad. Sunday morning rituals. Clean up my room from the night before, make my bed, finally sit down and text my (then) partner ‘good morning’, look through any notifications and check email. Sunday morning rituals.
I have more notifications than usual, and in fact, they keep coming in on my phone. Texts, Facebook messages, Twitter DM’s and mentions — “Are you okay? Did you hear the news?” Sunday morning rituals.
My face is hot and wet. I have dropped my phone. I can feel the air escaping my lungs, traveling up up up up, out of my city, out of the San Gabriel Valley, out of California, out of the West Coast, traversing several states and people and buildings in an attempt to reach Pulse. In an attempt to fill their lungs. In the hopes that maybe, if I try, if I truly try… it will get there. And it will be enough. But that doesn’t happen, and cars keep driving, my dad keeps watching TV, and more air keeps entering my lungs. Elsewhere, people continue. Straight and cis Latinx and Xicanx people keep waking up, keep watching their telenovelas, continue their Sunday morning rituals. Their air stays with them. They continue.
The Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando has been called the worse mass shooting in U.S. history. 49 Latinx and black people of the LGBTQ community were killed, and 53 others were injured. All of social media on June 12th was dominated by queer and trans people of color; our discourse, our grief, our anger, our reactions to losing 49 of our own, the terrifying reality that it could have been any of us. What was supposed to be a safe haven for QTPOC became homophobia and transphobia, incarnate. So here is my problem, the bone I have to pick: scrolling through my newsfeeds, my timeline, it was only QTPOC offering support and love to other QTPOC. We were the ones offering unwavering strength and solidary to and for each other. As for cishet Latinx/Xicanx? Well.. y’all were nowhere to be found. Don’t deny it, embrace it. Embrace the fact that you’ll fight for brown skin as long as it’s not “divisive” to La Raza, not too queer, not too outspoken against the cishet patriarchy that you so often coddle. Embrace the fact that you only ride for brown queer and trans folks when it’s convenient for you. It’s a harsh truth but one that has to be said, one that we’ve been saying.
So here is what I want the brown cishet community to understand:
understand that I am tired of y’all not listening when we’ve been screaming at the top of our lungs. Understand that in your brown spaces, no matter how ~radical~, dirty looks could still mean a bullet in my back. Understand our rage of watching people letting microagressions against QTPOC slide when it comes to your homies but are now hashtagging #PrayforOrlando.
Understand that microaggressions can escalate to acts of physical violence. Understand that they manifested in Orlando as bullet wounds.
Queer and trans people of color have been at the front lines of social movements, despite knowing that y’all won’t fight just as hard for us. We keep fighting and fighting on the frontlines only for y’all to stay quiet when we’re murdered, let microagressions against the QTPOC community slide, and call us jotas and maricónes behind our backs. If you all want to truly stand in solidarity with us, if you want unity, you have to confront and unlearn your homophobia and transphobia. You have to stop ignoring our issues and our deaths. Confront your femmephobia and machismo. And “understand [that] there can be no love without justice”. Take responsibility for the silence on June 12th, for the decades’ worth of silence. Love us in the way that you love each other, love us beyond boundaries and borders and binaries.
