#christopher rivas

‘Until I put my freedom on blast, no one took notice, and here I was trying to be small’ — Afro Latino actor and author Christopher Rivas opened up about embracing his identity and the challenges of being a person of color trying to ‘make it’ in the U.S.

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i have to say. i cannot help but be team oscar a little more because honestly oscar kinda captures what i saw in the original gary preston more than max does. also oscar is a sweetheart. however.

O.K., let me just get to it. I think I broke up with my last girlfriend because she’s white. Actually, no, I definitely broke up with her because she’s white.

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My pops would explain that as a young man in the Dominican Republic, you had to work so hard perfecting yourself, preparing your mask, so that when a young European or American woman came through, she might choose you, as he would put it, might take you home with her, like that was your only way out.

Later he made his way to New York City, where he met my mother, who is Colombian. He was married now and no longer had to be “chosen.” But habits ingrained in adolescence can be hard to break.

So early on I learned how important it was to be “chosen,” selected. Selected by whom became and remains my dilemma.

It’s been a year since I broke up with my girlfriend, and I haven’t told her the real reason. I talked around it, mumbling about how I was trying to figure out who I was or whatever. She didn’t understand. I’m not sure I do either. There was nothing wrong with her at all.

I don’t really know what my tipping point was. It just kind of happened. At 30, I woke up one day, took a deep breath, looked at her and thought, “I don’t think I can date white women anymore.”

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But the real reason I think I can no longer date white women isn’t any of that. It’s because in today’s hashtag-woke society, there is mad pressure to be hashtag-woke. To be aware of the implications of whom you’re attracted to and why. Which means that in the eyes of others, the color of the women I date is a big deal. Like I’m the problem. Like I’m betraying my people if I date white women.

But I was taught that we were all one people!

I see people watching me with a stink eye, noses turned up, as if they think black and brown people would somehow be better off if I dumped my white girlfriend. It’s a lot of pressure. Along with each watchful eye, the whispers of, “Pick a side, Chris, pick a side,” fill my already noisy mind. I started reading James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates and other black and brown authors looking for guidance, a road map, help on what it means to be a brown man in the world. Like: Yes, our bodies have been colonized. Yes, I am a child of blackness. Yes, the black body has done more for society than it has gotten in return. Yes, society seems to want to embrace a lot of things associated with blackness without actually being black.

How did we get here? If everyone is so woke, why are things so terrible? Maybe everyone isn’t so woke. Anyway, what am I supposed to do? How do I love as a brown body in the world in a way that makes everybody happy? I fell for a white woman and she fell for me — simple as that — yet I feel as if I’m doing the wrong thing by dating her.