The epitome of youthful innocence and naivety is built upon the foundation of dreams. It’s a message echoed in every aspect of a child’s life from the cat posters, insisting that the progeny “Dream Big!” to Disney World’s firework show fueled by the chants of thousands of children affirming, “Dreams come true!” Somehow this message of optimism-- the idea that big dreams and large ambitions make up the foundation of the world we wish to build-- has become widely promoted in a cynical society. But this dream is only for some. Ironically enough, this aspiration of conquering the world without bounds is indeed limited in its audience. 

There are many on which the weight of reality rests heavily upon early in the game. My naivety, for example, ended quite abruptly with a childhood experience featuring my friend Camille. During a playdate, her mom offered us ice cream, and Cammy chose vanilla. When I tried to follow suit, she matter-of-factly informed me that “there are chocolate and vanilla people; you’re a chocolate person, and I’m a vanilla person.” This tactless description of her ideology birthed the divide between her world and me. We were no longer humans experiencing childhood together; we were two completely different species who couldn’t possibly have similar tastes in ice cream. Sure, I had subconsciously recognized racial differences before, but never had I thought it was something so detrimental that I would forever be connected with my least favorite ice cream flavor. Later, I cried to my mother, inquiring what had cursed me to such a fate. As it would turn out, it was nothing serious: I was just black. 

Over the next years, as I learned more about the struggles of the BIPOC community, I began to understand that my identity condemned me to a fixed perception that limited my potential as a person. The more I researched, the faster my world came crashing down whilst white palaces remained erect. At first, the cognitive dissonance was overwhelming: my teachers had told me that my dreams could be as big as I wanted, but had they failed to mention that the possibility of me attaining them was slim? The competition of life had begun so long ago, had I been cluelessly at a disadvantage this entire time? Eventually, there was nothing left of my dreams; my future was handicapped by a glass ceiling, and there was nothing to be done.

I, like many others, was not allocated the room to believe in my power to change the world from a young age. I was fed only the stories that featured my ancestors as slaves serving the food in the background of important historical events, contributing to the conversation but without a cordial invite and without any recognition. And so how could I believe in my power to do anything about my circumstances given that narrative’s relentless recitation? 

Being black in this day and age in America means that I live in a country that was not built to see me thrive, that restricted the existence of my race; that is, even now, hesitant to make the necessary changes. But it is important to note that to struggle without hope that our efforts will have an impact is to fall victim to the lie that declares the melanin in our skin is the cause of our damnation. We may be fated to be categorized, perceived as such, made assumptions about, discriminated against, but that does not mean we aren’t allowed to believe in ourselves, to fight back against the systems that made us cynical in the first place. “We are called to be the architects of our future, not its victims.” If it is true that life is nothing more than a series of decisions we get to make and their consequential results, we have to make those important decisions according to a positive ideology if we want positive outcomes. 

And so I am optimistic. Too much time has been wasted feeling hopeless about dire circumstances for this country to revert to “business as usual” once the hype of this past summer dies down. I am going to dream big even if that message was not originally meant for me. I will have to work twice as hard for half the recognition and even harder if I want to be on the same playing field as my white peers. But that’s what I am going to do, because that’s what it’s going to take. I will do what is necessary to achieve my dreams-- the dreams that exist only because of my optimism-- but never at the price of compromising myself or my identity. This drive, this optimism, is the faith with which I face the new day.

“So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.”

^1 American architect R. Buckminster Fuller