People Think That There Is A Country

It Seemed From The Media That We Were Being Told That All Haitians Had Aids. At The Time, I Had Just Come From Haiti. I Was Twelve Years Old, And The Building I Was Living In Had Primarily Haitians. A Lot Of People Got Fired From Their Jobs. At School, Sometimes In Gym Class, We'd Be Separated Because Teachers Were Worried About What Would Happen If We Bled. So There Was Really This Intense Discrimination.

The Way The Media Cycle Works, The Way The News Works, And The Way People's Attention Span Works, Is That We Only Learn That People Exist When There Is Crisis.

When I Meet People For The First Time, I Always Put On My Glasses Because I Feel Like That's A Little Something Extra Between Me And Them. It's Like The Laurence Dunbar Poem "we Wear The Mask."

These Were Our Bedtime Stories. Tales That Haunted Our Parents And Made Them Laugh At The Same Time. We Never Understood Them Until We Were Fully Grown And They Became Our Sole Inheritance.

I See The Sharp Inequality Between How Haitian And Cuban Refugees Are Treated In Florida. Both Groups Come Here Because Their Lives Are Equally Desperate. But On Arrival, The Haitians Are Incarcerated, And Some Are Immediately Repatriated, Whereas Cubans Get To Stay And Are Eligible For Citizenship.