I gave my Afro-Latino boyfriend the 'police talk' before visiting the US. After George Floyd's killing, I watched his baptism into American life.
- After I moved to Cartagena, Colombia, I felt free in a way I didn't realize was possible growing up in predominantly white neighborhoods in the US.
- But when I started dating my boyfriend, an Afro-Latino man from Colombia, I realized how different our life experiences were.
- I had to give him the "police talk" before we visited my family in Florida, and I feared for his safety once we arrived a few months ago.
- Now, following the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, my instinct proved correct: it would have been irresponsible to not prepare an Afro-Latino man for what he may encounter in the US.
I was 9 years old the first time someone called me the n-word. She was a classmate, though her name escapes me now. I'll never forget the way she stood over me, spit out that hateful word, and then gleefully skipped away.
Two years later, I attended my first boy-girl party, a serious rite of passage for every sixth grader. It was also the first time I cried, wondering if the boys didn't "like like" me because of my skin. That feeling would follow me well into adulthood.
At 21, a police officer pulled me over one night and instructed me to get out of the car. I was alone, standing on the side of a deserted country road with only the spotlight from his car to illuminate my trembling body. "Do you have any warrants for your arrest?" My mind raced, thinking of all the ways he could hurt me with no one there to notice. "No," I said.
Stories like mine only scratch the surface, and they're certainly not unique to me
To grow up Black in the US is to be acutely aware of yourself and how others perceive you at all times. It wasn't until I left the US that I realized things didn't have to be this way.
Anti-Black racism may be a centuries-long, global pandemic, but unlike the US, few places purport a false narrative of democracy and freedom while actively upholding a brutal reality. Even fewer places see such deadly results from their racism. Knowing that brought me a sense of peace as I lived abroad.
Before last year, I had never thought of living in Colombia. But when a vacation fling turned into real romance, I packed my bags for Cartagena and moved in with my boyfriend Jhony.
Living in this city on the Caribbean coast liberated me in ways I didn't know possible. Racism, and especially colorism, certainly exist in Colombia. These wounds fester in every post-colonial country. But in Cartagena, for the first time in my life, my blackness made me part of the majority.
Walking around the city, I often found myself admiring how my skin became part of this beautiful mosaic of black and brown bodies. It fascinated me to simply blend in, to go entirely unnoticed until I let out my accented Spanish. I could exist in a way that my upbringing in predominantly white neighborhoods did not allow. In Cartagena, I felt light. To just be felt radical.
The more I learned about my boyfriend, the more I realized how much his life experiences differed from mine
The respectability politics, stereotypes, and fear of racially motivated hate or violence — these things didn't plague Jhony's existence in the same way as a Black man who grew up in the predominantly Black regions of Colombia.
A part of me felt jealous, but I also felt hopeful. Then came November.
Around this time, protests spread across Colombia in response to newly announced changes to the country's labor laws. The night before Cartagena's march, I watched Jhony prepare his protest sign, and we spoke about the fights between police and demonstrators in Bogota, Colombia's capital.
"If a police officer disrespects me, I'll yell back," Jhony said. "They can't treat me poorly just because they're cops."
His words struck panic in my heart. I was frightened for the protest he planned to join the next day, but also for our upcoming visit to my family in Florida — his first time in the States.
"You cannot do that in the US," I blurted out. My sense of urgency probably struck him as a bit odd, but something had snapped in me. This aha moment highlighted a gaping blind spot in our pre-trip preparations. For all the differences I had noticed before, I hadn't considered a very important one until that moment: police brutality did not concern him.
I thought I had at least a decade to figure out how to have the dreaded "police talk" with my future children; to learn how to explain the potential dangers of police interactions in a way that equipped them and inspired just the right amount of fear. But my time was up.
I thought of Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Philando Castile, and countless more Black men and women whose lives ended too soon at the hands of law enforcement. As an Afro-Latino man, I knew Jhony's life may depend on this information one day, and I had the responsibility to tell him.
I fumbled through my "police talk," giving the best advice that I could
Stay calm no matter how they address you. Keep your hands visible at all times. If you must reach for your ID, move slowly and announce what you're doing. He didn't quite understand the complexities of racism in the US, but he could grasp tangible safety instructions. That was all that mattered.
After the conversation, a sense of guilt washed over me. I hated exposing him to this danger he didn't feel at home. I felt responsible for him as a guest in my country. It brought tears to my eyes imagining the hypothetical scenario of calling his family with horrific news. If something happened to him, would they blame me for bringing him here?
I even gaslit myself, questioning if I had somehow exaggerated the situation. I didn't want to be right about this, but my justification came sooner than expected. In the few months since we arrived in Florida, we've seen the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, all involving former or current police officers.
These senseless deaths confirmed my initial instinct: it would have been irresponsible to not prepare an Afro-Latino man for what he may encounter in the US.
And now that the country has erupted into protests, it's almost surreal to watch Jhony's baptism into this all-too-familiar ritual.
We sit around the TV day and night, hanging off every word and waiting for new details. We watch the footage from different angles and discuss the case with loved ones. We gasp and shake our heads at scenes from the protests. We share our own experiences with racism and collectively wonder if this cycle will ever end. It's the same process every time until the next Black person is killed by law enforcement.
On most days, Jhony is too stoic for me to gauge how he's taking all of this in
I notice furrowed brows and stares of disbelief coming from him on occasion. They usually accompany grandiose declarations of what he would do if a police officer ever killed his child. I also see him seeking out different resources to learn the history of racism in the US. I wish he didn't need this information. If we ever decide to move here permanently, at least he'll have some context to understand the nuanced racism we still see today.
"The US is supposedly one of the best countries on the planet," he lamented after several days of watching the recent protests. "How can they kill you just for being black?"
I shouldn't have been surprised. Unlike many Colombians, Jhony never fell for the idealism and false promises of the American Dream. Seeing the imperfections of this country didn't shock him.
Yet I was still taken aback by his blunt conclusion. I wanted to disagree. I wanted to defend my home country and explain that it's not that simple. But maybe it is that simple. At the end of the day, the circumstances behind racially motivated violence don't matter. The result is still the same: you can be killed just for being black.
Jessica Poitevien is a freelance writer focused on travel, food, and culture. She's oddly obsessed with baking shows, talking to strangers, and exploring nature. You can find her blogging about expat life, becoming a digital nomad and more at She Dreams of Travel.
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