So, why bother: Why work and walk, when being who you were born still hurts? 

 1994 Baltimore, when I had finally secured the protection of a job at Space Telescope Science Institute, and was trying to make friends with co-workers, and forget my origins:

“There are people here who will not want someone who looks like you on their land.”

“The races don’t mix.”

Apparently, the South had risen, again, up in northern Maryland.  

Why bother, again?

Because Adulting includes the responsibility to strive for better. Better from oneself, and better from and for our world.

Though many up north do not recognize those of us whose families have always officially been labelled “colored” (as my birth certificate reads), yet called “mulatto families” informally, the resentment remains, and so does the pain.  Brown parties were real, but so were efforts to use our light skin for the good of our…