This is for all those brown kids who moved to the suburbs while in middle school or high school only to discover that how they acted was criminalized.

This is for all those POCs in private universities, getting a graduate degree in English literature and white supremacy via policing of comportment.

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This is for all those strong WOC who have been called a bitch, even when all you did was defend yourself after being verbally assaulted with the sharp knives of racism and sexism.

This is for all those people who grew up brown and poor, which meant that your actions outside your neighborhood are considered threatening but nobody talks about what is actually happening and that is that their feelings about you that matter more.

When I was 10 years old, my parents moved us from a barrio to a suburb. It was still a Latinx neighborhood, but when we moved we went from being around mostly new immigrants to a neighborhood full of second/third generation immigrants.

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I soon entered middle school, and started to notice some differences in this new neighborhood. For starters, there was a huge difference in the shoes I wore versus the shoes that my peers wore. I had a pair of brown loafers, from PayLess. My peers had Nikes, Adidas, and the like. Also, everyone knew English and spoke it well, while I was in my first environment where teachers did not teach me in Spanish. Also, the books were all brand new or close to it, while I had no books in my previous school, other than the ones that the teacher had in her classroom. We were not given books to take home. No.

But one distinct difference I noticed, from having attended this previous school in the hood and this new school in the suburbs was that I got in trouble a lot. I went from being a quiet kid, to being a disruptive kid, and all that happened was that I was in a new context, a context that was not immigrant-friendly.

I was never a mean kid, nor was I a confrontational kid. But I definitely knew how to defend myself from those people who were mean and confrontational. You learn that in the hood, really early. You learn that your teachers do not want to be there, and they will treat you as such. You learn that the security guards at the school do not trust any of the kids, and they treated us all as untrustworthy kids. You learn that adults are not always nice, for whatever reason their oppression manifests itself in having a tough shell and that gets inherited to you. You learn that cops do not care about you, so you learn to fight and stick up for yourself. You learn that the world is mean, and you expect it and you learn to handle it.

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Yet, here I was in my own little world of a middle schooler, still adapting and trying to be softer and appear less threatening because I knew and saw that people in this new context did not like that…and then something happened, I was accused of bullying.

I was in my English class, and a girl turned to me and said something to me about my mami not having a college degree and I got real mad because it is cultural to react to an insult about someone’s mom. When you’re that young, you do not have much to protect and care about but you definitely know that you love your mami and she deserves people's respect.

At first I was shocked because this was, within the context, a challenge. And from what I knew, by experiences, I needed to respond to this girl, because this is like a shark when they circle around potential prey to see if it is in fact something worth eating or digestible. She was circling around me, and if I didn't fluff my feathers I could potentially be in for a long situation where I was constantly going to be preyed upon. YOU LEARN THIS BY THE TIME YOU ARE FIVE YEARS OLD. This is basic information, and also important for your survival when you grow up in food deserts, school segregation – also known as public-school zoning – and communities with “high crime rates” aka communities where the cops only show up to arrest us but never to protect anyone from the real harms like greed and capitalism perpetuated by the wealthier neighborhoods.

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So here I was, in this very crucial moment, where I could become a “victim” or defend myself, and I responded to this girl in my most serious face: if you ever say anything about my mom, I will kick your ass.

This girl, her name was Crystal, her eyes opened up as wide as I have ever seen anything and she began to cry, loudly.

It became a spectacle, and the teacher was informed and next thing I knew I was in detention and being accused of bullying.

ME, I WAS THE BULLY.

Because when I was in middle school, I was accused of being a bully. Because when I was in graduate school some person told me that I needed to speak nicer so that I could be taken seriously. Because some white girl emailed me telling me that my writings were too angry, and I could reach a wider audience if I learned to address everyone aka white people like her. Because when a white cop pulled me over, and told me that he did so because he saw that I was not wearing my seatbelt and I chuckled because that is not an infraction that mandates I am pulled over, but he did not want to admit that he profiled me as “illegal” and wanted to check my license to prove his suspicions. Because people are assholes and treat POC and people from a working-poor context like we are filth, and when we react they scream and demand that our personhood remain intact.

WE ARE THE BULLIES.

This piece is for those of us who have never been allowed to exist without apologizing to other people for our existence.

Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodriguez is the founder of Latina Rebels.