Circle of Candor · Living Magic with Juju
I was raised to fear my own people.
Not in those exact words — but in the small comments, the warnings, the looks, and the stories that shaped the way I understood the world long before I had a chance to meet it for myself.
In my family’s version of the Caribbean, darker skin wasn’t just “different.”
It was treated as dangerous.
Dirty.
Lazy.
Untrustworthy.
Something to avoid.
Something to outgrow.
Something to feel above.
I didn’t know it then, but I was being handed a lens — one I didn’t ask for and didn’t understand — and told to see the world through it.
A lens built on someone else’s trauma, someone else’s fear, someone else’s misunderstanding of people who looked just like us.
I believed it.
Because children don’t question what they’re taught.
We absorb it.
We repeat it.
We call it truth.
When Your First Lessons Aren’t Yours — They’re Inherited
My mother wasn’t inventing racism; she was passing down what was passed to her.
Back home, colorism wasn’t a conversation — it was culture.
Lighter meant better.
Darker meant trouble.
Everyone “knew” it.
No one questioned it.
It was presented as fact, not ideology.
When I moved back to the States, those beliefs didn’t disappear — they just showed up in new ways.
I was never directly told to avoid anyone. I learned through reactions. The way a family member’s face tightened when a darker-skinned person walked by. The quiet comments under their breath. The disgusted tone. The stories spoken like warnings. The nickname “cocolo” thrown around casually, the way the N-word is used here.
I absorbed all of that before I even had the chance to meet people for myself.
The fear wasn’t taught in words — it was taught in behavior.
And every time I heard those words, they were said with confidence — like these weren’t stereotypes, but warnings meant to protect me.
Warnings that formed judgments about people I had never even spoken to.
The Moment Life Forced Me to See Clearly
The turning point didn’t come from a classroom lesson or a documentary.
It came from the life I was forced to live when I ran away at fifteen.
When you’re homeless, when you’re young, when you’re surviving with a baby on your hip, the world stops caring about the stories you were raised on.
Suddenly, you meet people who are struggling just like you — people who don’t fit the stereotypes you were taught.
I met Black men who protected me when I had no one.
Black women who fed me when I had nothing.
People who treated me with more humanity than some of my own family.
The moment everything shifted was the moment the lens finally cracked open.
Suddenly, the beliefs I had inherited stopped lining up with what I was living.
I realized the warnings I grew up with weren’t universal truths — they were my parents’ fears, shaped by their own history, and handed to me without context.
And the people I had been taught to be wary of?
They were standing beside me, navigating the same struggles, weathering the same storms, trying to survive just like I was.
The Racism That Doesn’t Look Like Racism — Until You Say It Out Loud
Internalized racism is a quiet thing.
You don’t recognize it until you hear yourself repeat the same beliefs someone else planted in you.
I caught myself doing it — using the same terms, making the same assumptions, holding the same judgments that weren’t mine to begin with.
And when I finally said it out loud, it stung.
Not because I was ashamed of being influenced, but because I knew I didn’t want to pass that on to my children.
I needed to unlearn what I didn’t consciously choose.
I needed to look at the people I was told to fear and see them as they are — not as someone else described them.
And the truth is simple:
There is good and bad in every community.
Struggle looks the same in every color.
Humanity doesn’t belong to one race.
The problem wasn’t people — it was the lens.
The Work of Raising Children Who See Clearly
Breaking a cycle isn’t about pretending it didn’t exist — it’s about choosing differently.
I teach my kids to see people as people.
Not as warnings.
Not as stereotypes.
Not as skin tones that come with pre-written labels.
I explain where those beliefs came from.
I tell them how easy it is to inherit fear that doesn’t belong to you.
I show them how humanity looks in all shades.
And I correct my own language out loud, not in silence.
Because they need to see me doing the work, not pretending the work is done.
Racism Today Isn’t Always Loud — Sometimes It’s Polite
We like to think racism is obvious — slurs, insults, extreme hate.
But the racism I see most today is subtle:
• coded language
• “concerns” that are actually stereotypes
• assumptions disguised as advice
• preferences that are really prejudices
• neighborhoods divided by unspoken rules
• fear without a reason, passed down as protection
It still lives in families, in friendships, in the comments people whisper because they think they’re being “realistic.”
It still shapes how people move, who they trust, who they avoid, and who they think they’re above.
And it still hurts — just quietly.
A Little Compassion for Where We Learned It
I no longer hold anger toward my mother.
She did what she knew, shaped by a world that taught her to protect herself by pulling away from others.
The fear she carried wasn’t personal — it was inherited.
The silence she kept was learned.
And the labels she used were the shortcuts she was taught long before she had the chance to question them.
Understanding that doesn’t excuse it — but it softens the edges.
It lets me hold accountability without bitterness.
It lets me see the human behind the belief instead of the belief alone.
And it reminds me that unlearning isn’t about shaming the people who taught us — it’s about refusing to pass their burden forward.
✦ Reflection Pause ✦
What beliefs were handed to you before you had the chance to question them?
And who might you become if you decided to see the world through your own eyes?
Closing Softly
I didn’t choose the lens I was given — but I’m choosing the lens I use now.
Unlearning racism isn’t a single moment.
It’s a continuous returning to what’s true.
A quiet willingness to see beyond what you were taught.
A promise to yourself to do better than what you inherited.
If it hasn’t been said recently:
you’re free to evolve beyond the beliefs you inherited,
to view people through your own lived experience rather than the one you were handed,
and to shape your story in a way that feels honest and humane to you.
With clarity, courage, and a commitment to truth,
~ Juju
livingmagicwithjuju 
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