Pamela
“Okay, I’m gonna go back to when it all started and we were still in school. I used to be there all the time -- I’m the type of person to be at the library from whenever I had free time until 3 in the morning. Obviously that was a big change, because I have to do all my studying at home and don’t have that moral support from other people pushing me to do better. And then for the social aspect, I was in a sorority and COVID cancelled all our plans for not only now (spring) but for the Fall semester. All of our plans changed a little bit -- I’m not going to say “ruined” -- but yeah. What else… oh, I wake up a lot later now, because there’s nothing really to look forward to. I do suffer from mental illness, like depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, so it was really, really hard to maintain focus, keep track of things, and keep my sanity at the same time. So I had to learn new ways to cope with all these things and how to be a better version of myself during all of this. I keep finding myself through and through. I’m not going to say that this has been completely bad; people are looking at it the wrong way. I think if you would’ve looked at it as, “I’m trying to help other people,” this whole pandemic would have gone much smoother.
“At the beginning I didn’t have a job, and I was just at home all day. I decided I was going to learn to cook new things, I decided I was going to work out and keep that, and it has been going really good. It’s not about me looking better when I look in the mirror, it’s about me feeling better about myself. And remembering that by staying home, I’m helping others. I feel like that’s the most important thing for me, that I can do this in order to keep people who are high-risk healthy and safe. There’s no need to be outside, there’s nothing open either way!
“I’ve never had a C in a class, and this semester I had my first C -- my first “Oh wow, I cannot learn.” It was my statistics class (I’m also really bad at math, so keep that in mind). I couldn’t go to tutorials, because we weren’t at UTA, but that’s how I learn. I’m a very visual person, and if there’s not someone actually next to me, I’m not going to learn. I passed the class, that’s the important thing. I got a 79, and it was barely there. I couldn’t process a whole lot because I was so distracted, but it’s just normal and people do that. There’s no need to blame it on a pandemic, that was on me. Yeah.
“Last I checked, UTA was just going to start online in the Fall, and then in the upcoming spring we would do some classes at UTA and some online. It was “in the works.” They’ll make us wear masks, but I don’t know how that’ll really work. I believe that wearing a mask will prevent a lot of spread, but that’s not going to work 100%. We need to take other precautionary steps too to avoid the spread. I still see people all the time that walk into bathrooms and don’t wash their hands. That’s so common. People just don’t think about these little things, and they’re touching everything. You come home from the grocery store, and you’ve touched something that someone else touched. It’s just a cycle of people being nasty. It’s alarming to see all of that.
“I just started working at Dick’s a week ago. We’ve had a boom of people throughout the week, and probably 80 percent of them were not wearing a mask. I’m gonna have to start wearing a shirt that says, “Don’t come anywhere near me without a mask, I don’t like you, I’m sorry!” That’s going to be my new dating requirement: please wear a mask and stay the F away from me. Oh gosh. Frankly, it’s stupid, idiotic, and I really don’t understand why people don’t get it. Enforcing mask rules would benefit a lot of people -- not only people coming into stores, but being unselfish for once and thinking about the others you’re putting at risk by being dumb and not wearing a mask. Why do other people need to pay for your mistakes?
“Everything has been going crazy. It feels like yesterday that George Floyd was murdered. I don’t know why I’m bringing this up, but it still feels very relevant because people are still going to protests and still going out there. Frankly, when I first saw that video, I thought it would lead to one week of protests and then people just brushing it off. I’m so happy that the entire world has proved me wrong about this, but we need to still take more precautions when it comes to the virus. It’s not going away, and we’re going to need to learn to live with it, and that’s it.
“I’m trying to do everything I can do online. I’m going to sign petitions -- I’ve signed so many of them -- and I’ve watched videos that give funds to foundations. I’m trying to do everything I can. For protests, I’m trying to watch how people are going about this, and I’m going to try to go to the safest ones. So I went to one in Arlington, and I think the most important part was being mindful of my space and of other people. That helped a lot. Nobody was touching each other. Usually when you go to protests or other events, people are really really close. This time, people were honestly trying to keep 6 feet apart, hydrating, everybody had snacks for each other, and really just everyone keeping each other in check. I would basically overdose on Vitamin C every time, and then I would wait 2-3 days (I know it takes up to 2 weeks to show symptoms) and then go to another protest. Every time I came home, I would immediately shower and disinfect all the areas I touched, and then I would just go at it again and protest more. I’ve gotten the routine down. Everyone that came with me to protest would have to follow that too. Otherwise, they would not go.
“I even took my little sister. Frankly, I was scared. I don’t want anyone in my house to get it, and not her. But she had that desire, and if someone asks her what she did in 2020, she should be able to say she went to a protest and fought for rights. I want her to be able to do that. So I took her, and she’s fine.
“There seriously needs to be lots of reform. Oh my gosh. If I was president… first of all, I love that Pride Month merged with Black Lives Matter. It was so important to mesh the two together, because we’re fighting for human rights at the end of the day. At some point, we shouldn’t have this inequality and these differences. If someone has a different skin tone, how is that offensive to you? What does someone’s sexuality have to do with them being a good person? The two don’t correlate. They don’t go with each other. I hope that the more exposure these things get, the more accepting people are at the end of the day. There shouldn’t be an excuse for you to be racist. Like, no, I’m sorry, but there’s just not. I hope that in the future people don’t make the same mistakes.
“In terms of the police, obviously that needs to be fixed. There’s just so much that can be implemented to help fix this. They can require officers to go to college, educating themselves for 2 or 4 years -- something other than a high school diploma, because we can see that’s not enough. It’s a career where you have the power to take someone’s life, and this is all the training you have? It’s completely unacceptable. If I have to go to school for 4 years to learn how to treat people, I should also have to spend 4 years learning how to not kill people. There’s a lot that can be done. We also need to be calling out racists, starting young, because you don’t want those people in professional settings. That’s not acceptable in any way, shape, or form. We need to keep fighting for these rights and keep talking with racists and anything else we can do. I’ve been having these difficult talks with family members. Like, they’re everywhere.
“In the past the immediate response has been, “Let’s not get too political,” because it wasn’t seen as much in the news. People didn’t see it as often, so they used this excuse to ignore it. But now that it’s everywhere, there’s no way to be neutral. You either support it or not. Come on, there’s so much proof. The proof is right there. People are reading about it more, so they’re supporting it more, and they’re talking about it more.
“Something that has bothered me has been the posers going to protests and pretending that they cared. I haven’t been very active on Instagram because I’ve also had work, but I try to post when I get a chance. I realized that most people were there for a minute and then stopped caring. They’re gone and tried to brush it off. If you go on Twitter, you can see so much that happens every day, and if you’re not angry at this point, what are you doing? Are you just not paying attention? Are you that absorbed in your own world of privilege that you can’t see beyond that? That’s crazy. And going to the protest in Euless and hearing Channing speak was amazing. She did such an amazing job. I actually got advised not to go to that protest because there’s a lot of racist people in Euless, and that actually took me by surprise, how a place with so much pride in its diversity is so racist. I thought that I would have no issue going there, but to have Channing talking about it, and her mom talking about it, and to have all these people coming forward and saying “No, this is a problem even here” -- how can we fix that? I have no idea.
“I mean, I don’t think I’ve personally experienced anything. The Tongan thing, I did see that -- they don’t go into higher education often, and why is that? I was in the Trinity Spanish program, and Señora Diaz has spoken out on it. Love her to death. She told me about a presentation to the staff where she spoke out about the issues students of color face -- not just Black students but everyone in the mix -- and why were hispanic students less likely to be in higher academics like AP and IB, or less likely to even get to college? Why was that? So it’s kind of similar, but not really. The issues are there, but they’re different situations. That reminds me of something on Twitter that caught me off guard. “The white man wants the hispanic woman to clean and cook for them, but wants the Black men killed.” So like, the oppression is still there, but it’s not the same. It sucks, but it’s there.
“It brought a lot of self-reflection. Growing up, I was mostly around students of color, including Black students. We were not treated that differently. I went to Hurst Junior High for a bit, and that’s when I first noticed the division. It was real. Then I went to Euless, and everyone was cool with each other I guess. But when Channing said, “the diverse schools were seen as the ghetto schools” -- I always thought that Euless was “the ghetto one,” but then she said that and I realized that, oh crap, we were all seen this way. Gotcha. But yeah, there’s been a lot of self-reflection for me, like with the N word. I have to admit, I used it, but it was never in a degrading sense. I know there’s not an excuse, but younger me would hang out with Black people and we would all use it interchangeably for other things. It was never to be racist, but I grew up and realized, oh crap. I started taking advanced classes and educating myself more and really realizing what I was saying and how dense the word is, and I really regret it. I never said it harmfully, but never will again. These are little things, but I think about it a lot, and they’re still so relevant.
“Something I’ve been doing a lot now too -- I don’t know if it’s good or bad -- I’ve been taking small breaks from social media because there’s this battle between my own mental and emotional issues (that take a toll on me daily), but I’m also wanting to be a better person in the world and hold other people accountable. So which path do I take? It’s a battle constantly. I’ve been finding a good balance where I can spend a couple hours on the internet and browse and educate myself and others, and then take a couple days to relax and process that information. Because it’s a lot, and we’re not supposed to know it all. We just need to absorb and keep going.”
Quotes edited for clarity.
This summer’s calls for racial justice have led both Pamela and Ari to reevaluate their own privilege and identity as hispanic women; read Ari’s page for another perspective.
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