Why I Said ‘I’m Not Black’ and What I Meant

In this episode, I share a childhood story that shaped how I understand race, identity, and the language we use to describe ourselves. What started as an innocent moment between two little girls turned into years of confusion — not because I didn’t know who I was, but because I didn’t yet have the words.

I talk about the difference between race, ethnicity, and culture, why those distinctions matter, and how misunderstandings around them still shape our conversations today. This isn’t about blame — it’s about clarity, compassion, and learning to see the systems we’re all moving through.

If you’ve ever struggled to explain your identity, or wondered why these conversations feel so charged, this one might give you a new way to think about it.

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Music By Geovane Bruno, Moments, 3481
Editing by Team A-J
Host, Carmen Lezeth


DISCLAIMER:  As always, please do your own research and understand that the opinions in this podcast and livestream are meant for entertainment purposes only. States and other areas may have different rules and regulations governing certain aspects discussed in this podcast.  Nothing in our podcast or livestream is meant to be medical or legal advice. Please use common sense, and when in doubt, ask a professional for advice, assistance, help and guidance. 

Transcript

[00:00:10] Hi, everyone. Welcome to All About the Joy. I am Carmen Lezeth your host, and this is Carmen Talk So this is a picture of me and my best friend when I was a little girl, Regina. And we're in front of, a fireplace, and we're two years old. I know this 'cause the date's on the back. And this is one of my favorite childhood memories, and I'm gonna explain why.

[00:00:41] And I hope through the process, you get to learn something, not just about me, but maybe reevaluate the way in which you think about race in this country. so when I was growing up, I distinguished between when my mom was alive, so the first 11 years of my life, and after my mom passed away.

[00:01:08] There's kind of that dividing line. And when I was y- younger, I have vivid memories of certain moments, and one of them was this. My mom and Regina's mom were friends. I think they worked together somewhere. And, my mom would drop me off at, Regina's house, and I would stay with them once in a while.

[00:01:32] when I was growing up, we lived in a three-decker house in Boston, Massachusetts, in Jamaica Plain, which is very, common. they're beautiful homes in, Jamaica Plain now, but back then, they were these three-decker apartment type of homes, and that's how I grew up, in an apartment.

[00:01:53] And when I would go to Regina's house, it was, to me, it was this mansion. Remember, I was really little. It was, a white house with pillars, and it was beautiful. They had this really huge driveway. They had, two cars. And Regina had her mom and her dad. She had two brothers, and she had an older sister.

[00:02:15] And, this room, we couldn't play in this room, but to the right of me, there's this ... I remember this, 'cause this is what I had determined made them rich. It's so funny. they had this beautiful piano, this gorgeous piano, and they would, you know, her dad would play the piano, and we could play on it only when he was there.

[00:02:39] the older kids took lessons. And I just remember being like, "This is what being rich is like," Now, when I'm able to look back, I just realize we were really poor you know? This was like a normal family,in the neighborhood. They were just a normal family with, a normal, regular income of the time, but living the American dream, you know?

[00:03:00] And They were just, uh, to me it was this weird kind of concept of like, "Oh, I hope we can live like this someday too," you know? And so it, it, it's a, it's one of my favorite memories. Um, it also is a learning moment for me, and I wanna share that with you as well. So one weekend I stayed over and for the whole weekend.

[00:03:24] And I remember, most vividly not having the right clothes for certain events. Like, we would change to have dinner or, or I would have to change out of my play clothes to have dinner. That's not something we did when I was growing up. We also, had to really dress up for church. Now, I was raised Catholic, and, we got dressed for church, but this was getting dressed up for church, and I had to wear Regina's dresses in order to go to church.

[00:03:52] And also church with this family was very different because it was a different, a different church. And I don't remember if they were Baptist or I don't remember, uh, but it was quote-unquote Black church, and that was, like, all day. It was all day. And it was community, and it was neighborhood, and it was, um, after church you would then go and you would, have, community with people.

[00:04:15] And you would have food, and it was such an event. And I remember being like, "This is so exciting compared to my church," which was like, I don't know, it felt like it was 19 hours long, but it really was only an hour. But it was just different. It was a different experience altogether But I remember I would leave Regina's house, I would come back home, whatever, and I would try to explain to other adults, like teachers and mentors and managers, people, I would be like, "I was just at my best friend's house," and you know, blah, blah, blah.

[00:04:50] And I'm, and I said these words. I said, "I know I'm not Black." And what was interpreted was that I was denying who I was, and that I was trying to say something bad about the experience. But I didn't have the right verbiage. I didn't have the right words to express what I was saying. I was just a kid. But I was saying I was not Black because I was experiencing something different.

[00:05:24] Let me tell you, that got me into so much trouble on so many levels, people thinking I was denying who I was, people thinking I was trying to be white, people thinking, you know, all of these different things. But what I realize is even adults back then didn't have the right verbiage and didn't understand the difference between race and ethnicity.

[00:05:45] I certainly didn't know the difference. I was a kid. But I realize now that a lot of people don't understand the difference. So let me explain it in a really easy way when it comes to race. First, let's talk about what race is. Race is a social construct, and when we use that terminology, what we mean is We as human beings, as we evolved, made decisions to categorize people based on what they look like.

[00:06:23] So that's a it's a social construction, right? And I'm not making excuses for why we did this, but I will say it's a natural instinct to want to be able to categorize things, right? To categorize people, not in a bad way, but to say all of these people are this color of people. 

[00:06:46] We could have just as easily said all people with brown eyes are one group, all people with blue eyes are another group. We could have easily done it that way. We're- or we could have said anybody who's left-handed is in one group, or everybody who has blonde hair or red hair is in one group, and everybody with brown hair is the better people and, and they're in another group.

[00:07:12] See what I'm saying? And by the way, there are only five races. So I want you to think about it. We're talking about what people look like, okay? There are only five races: Asian, white, Black, Native American, and Pacific Islander.

[00:07:30] Okay? There are other races when you start going down into the weeds that, anthropologists and scientists and people have, talked about. But in general, those are the five races on the planet. Okay? race is what we look like. So skin color, features on our face, what our hair is like.

[00:07:56] So basically, race is what you see, and it's what we've done as humans to categorize each other, which at first is a very natural instinct to do. Okay? ethnicity and culture is different. I'm gonna use food to explain this, okay? When I went to Regina's family's home and I experienced something different than what we did, we had...

[00:08:28] It was the first time I had collard greens and fried chicken and... It wasn't the first time I had fried chicken, but fried chicken like that, okay . It was the first time I had food that was different than my own culture. I grew up on arroz con frijoles, right? Rice and beans. Um, arroz con pollo, rice and chicken.

[00:08:46] Very different. Spicy, right? Very, very different thing. And don't get me wrong, this food, best food I ever had, still to this day . But, but... And different kind of spices. In the same respects, I also grew up in JP, and so I had the, I don't know, privilege I wanna say, of also hanging out, with the McIntires, right?

[00:09:10] And I... It was the first time I had shepherd's pie. It's the first time I had corned beef and cabbage, 'cause that was Irish American, Irish American food. So you can see how these three different types of food and these three different families have different ethnicities and culture. That's different than our skin color.

[00:09:35] Our skin color is different, right? So I am a Black woman, but I would never say that I am African American. And I know it gets a little complicated, 'cause yes, I have African blood in me. I have African roots. I do, and I've done my DNA testing, so I know that I also, have roots from Africa, Senegal specifically.

[00:10:02] but I was raised culturally Latina because my mother was from Honduras. Now, also when I did DNA testing, because as many of you know who've read my book or have watched our, podcast and live stream, I don't know anything about my father, nothing whatsoever. But I do know through DNA testing that he was from, Portugal, right?

[00:10:25] So, and, and that's probably where I get some of my Anglo features from, okay? 'Cause I don't really look like my mom at all. So eth- ethnicity is very different, and our culture is very different. Race is a social construct and is really visually about where we fall. That's why we can see somebody who is Jewish and say that they're white, because we're talking about their skin color.

[00:10:52] I can see somebody who's Italian or Portuguese and see them... Y- I know their ethnicity and their culture, but they're white. Because that is part of how we've created categories, okay? So why does this matter? Why is this so important? Well, it's important because we need to understand the verbiage.

[00:11:13] When we understand the verbiage, we can understand all of the nuances that go along with that, right? So let's pretend for a moment that instead of skin color, we decided that it was all gonna be about eye color, right? Race was going to be about eye color and not about skin color. And so there are more brown-eyed people in the United States than blue or hazel.

[00:11:41] So brown-eyed people rule, okay, in this scenario. So in this scenario, everybody with brown eyes is awesome, and we say we're awesome because there's so many more of us, and so we have the ability to create all the things we need to create. We can create banks. We can create schools. We can create a whole bunch of things because we're the dominant people.

[00:12:08] And so here's what happens. If you are a brown-eyed person and you walk into my bank, naturally we have a connection to each other. It's easy. You know what I mean? Like, we're brown eyes. And when a blue-eyed person comes in, I'm gonna be nice to them, too, but it's not like the brown-eyed people. If you call me over while you're filling out your application for a loan and you have a question, I'm gonna be like, "Don't worry.

[00:12:33] I got you. I got you. No problem." And I might help you with that. A blue-eyed person might ask me the same question, and it wouldn't be an intentional thing that I'm doing, but I might be like, "Oh, you know what? I actually, as much as I wanna help you, you need to answer that on your own. Um, I, I can give you a few hints," but it...

[00:12:51] because I don't have the same connection to them 'cause they're not in my tribe, right? I don't think everybody in the United States who is white is intentionally racist. But when you do not acknowledge what your privilege as a brown-eyed person is, when you don't understand the nuances of feeling comfortable all the time because the systems have been set up for all brown-eyed people, when you don't acknowledge that, when you don't see that, then you accidentally do treat that blue-eyed person badly, differently, wrongly It's hard to acknowledge as human beings that we fail sometimes, even when we don't mean to.

[00:13:47] It's hard to do that, I know, because I have to question myself sometimes. I have to admit some things about myself sometimes to become a better person. So the reason why I'm talking about this is, first of all, everybody has been confused about what the difference is between race, ethnicity, and culture, and I hope I have helped in some way, shape, or form to clarify that for people.

[00:14:15] Also, just because we differentiate each other by race, which is a natural thing we would have done anyway as humans, doesn't mean you're automatically racist. However, if you are a white person and you don't acknowledge that the systems have been set up specifically for white people, then you are accidentally or unintentionally being racist towards people who don't have the same type of, here comes the word, privilege.

[00:14:54] Privilege just means that you are in the dominant brown-eyed group of people, and the dominant brown-eyed group of people have a camaraderie. You're part of the tribe. You're part of the group. That doesn't mean you're intentionally trying to be mean to the blue-eyed people or the hazel-eyed people, who we really hate

[00:15:15] You know what I mean? Like, we... I- I'm kidding about the hate thing. I'm just trying to make an example of how you can digest what it means to be a person who is white in the United States, a person who has the, the majority of stuffage. Okay? When you can start to understand that, you can start to deconstruct the kind of stuff that is happening to other people.

[00:15:47] 'Cause here's the thing. I believe in compassion and empathy and love, and I do believe that most people, no matter your race, culture, ethnicity, especially in the United States, the thing that makes us brilliant people, even if we can't see it right now, is the ability to be better than we used to be And that's, that's the thing I've always loved about the United States, was that we, it might take us a long time, it might take us forever to get there, but once we get there, we're on it.

[00:16:23] We have figured it out, and then we do it better than anyone else. I already see, um, Andrea's eyes rolling as I'm saying this. But this is Carmen talk, and that's why I feel really comfortable sharing this right now. I think there's a freedom in understanding the systems that we are in, as opposed to continuously reacting to them.

[00:16:45] And so many White people in the United States right now are reacting to the pressures that are coming onto them, because people are screaming about how unfair things are, and it's because you can't see it. It's hard to see. It's a hard thing to see. Because we have to understand what race is, what ethnicity is, what culture is, and why it matters And on the flip side of this, and this is where I'm gonna get in trouble as well, I already know it.

[00:17:25] I wanna share this with all of the people of color, all of the other races that are not white. We need to be able to show grace as well. And people don't like to use the word person of color. I still use it because I know people get confused with what being Black is and what being African American is, and what being Latino is, and what being Asian is.

[00:17:48] You know? People get very confused by that, so I, I'm okay using people of color. We do not live in a colorblind society, so stop that as well. When people say, "I don't see color," you're in denial of how you function as a human in the world. I know you mean well. Like, I would love to live in that utopia too, but we don't live there.

[00:18:14] Because as humans, we develop ways to categorize each other. We do. I wanna use one more example before I finish, because I think it'll make it even easier. Let's pretend I'm an architect, and I build houses for a living, and I've built thousands of them. I'm so good at building houses. And someone comes to me, and they are in a wheelchair, and they say that they'd like me to build a house 'cause they've seen all the work I've done.

[00:18:49] They're so excited. And I say to them, "Absolutely, I'm gonna build a house for you. I'm so excited," blah, blah, blah, blah. And I go about and I build this house. And I build it as I've built all the other houses, 'cause that's what I'm good at. And what I didn't take into, into account, not out of malice, not out of any malintent, I built the house like I've built all the other houses, and I forgot that they are in a wheelchair,

[00:19:19] So when they try to use their kitchen countertops, they can't reach them because they're too high up. I didn't build the cabinets correctly, so they can't reach them at all. Maybe they're not supposed to have cabinets. Maybe they're supposed to be at the, on, on, on a lower... Maybe there's a... I need to learn how to build a house for someone who's in a wheelchair, because that's not what I do as the dominant architect who builds houses for everybody Do you see where I'm going with this?

[00:19:56] I built the bathroom in such a way that they can't even get to the shower because there's not enough room in the doorway or between the sink and the wall or whatever it is. I don't know anything different because I've been building houses the way I've always built them, and I didn't take a moment to ask or consider the person that actually is in the disadvantage of being in the wheelchair, what can I do to make sure this house fits you perfectly so that you are comfortable, so that you can thrive, so that you can be in a home that you deserve and can become the best human being you can be?

[00:20:39] I didn't even think about it. It wasn't even in my thought process, and it's not because I'm a bad architect. It's because I didn't know any different, because I didn't take a moment to consider the possibilities of what they need. So I hope this was helpful in some way, shape, or form, at least to get you to start thinking about race in a very different way, and to start understanding that we are all unique and beautiful and brilliant human beings, and we have such potential, especially here in the United States.

[00:21:19] I believe in the best of who we can be, and I still think that the United States can be a great and miraculously... I don't even know. Like, I love this country so much, and even though I'm disheartened as to where we are today, I believe in the miracle, the possibility of getting back on track, because I think we're all good people.

[00:21:47] I think we're all amazing citizens of this country, and we want what's best for each other And I know that racism is a horrible thing, but I do know that we can push towards being better human beings to each other. 

[00:22:12] So thank you again for hanging out. I appreciate it so much. I appreciate all of you who are also sending emails or liking and sharing and making comments. Uh, please know that All About the Joy is a network of shows. CarmenTalk is just one of them. but Friday Night Lives are an amazing place.

[00:22:33] You are all invited to hang out with us on Friday nights at 6:00 PM Pacific, 9:00 PM Eastern. And of course, Culture and Consequence is one of our shows where we talk about politics and culture and how it affects us and the consequences of those choices . And of course, we also have our private lounge where we interview people in the community and highlight what they're doing and how they're making the world a better place as well.

[00:23:02] So thank you for stopping by. Please like, share and subscribe and we'll see you next time. And remember, at the end of the day, it really is all about the joy. Bye everyone. Thanks for stopping by All About the Joy. Be better and stay beautiful, folks. Have a sweet day