speeches ever, after beating the odds and graduating with her Masters
recently.
The single parent and UCLA post-graduate recently received her
Masters in Social Work and was asked to speak at UCLA’s ‘Afrikan
Graduation’ where she pretty much blew attendees out the water with her
words of encouragement and inspiration.
With the theme of the evening
being #BlackGraduateLivesMatter, the mother of three served up
modern-day scholar meets fly girl realness, and spoke extremely candidly
and openly about fitting the stereotype of the assumed “Black Welfare Queen,” and
as a result, feeling ashamed to even consider going back to college.
However, not only did Juliet go back to school after over a decade of
being “out,” the now two-time graduate and key speaker, helped to create
programs and on-campus communities that embrace and advance other women
and mothers who were, and still are, in her very same position.
Chunking a duece to her haters, and speaking on behalf of the Black lives lost this year, Juliet went on to say:
Look around you, make no mistakes, the system of higher
education was not created with folks like most of us in mind. Let alone,
to support our diverse needs of how we often disrupt the social norm
and or stereotype of Black communities. But here we are ya’ll,
nonetheless, I stand before you today, a member of UCLA’s undergraduate
class 2013, and a Masters of Social Work 2015.My words today are inspired by and dedicated to all Black lives, that
have not just today, but for the past 7 generations have been stolen
from our friends, families, loved ones in our communities.Why do Black Lives matter?
They matter, because I matter. And who am I? Hmph!
I am the right wing’s poster child for the deficit, stereotype of a welfare queen.
I am the unapologetic, pregnant teenager, who flunked the 9th grade,
only to get pregnant in the 10 grade, but with God’s grace,
miraculously, I graduated from a high school, but a high school
specifically for teen mothers and pregnant teenagers.I am the one who spent 12 years in and out of a community college, while having 2 more kids, just to make it here.
I am one of many reasons why society tells us that Black lives don’t
matter, and often perceived as a menace to our countries hegemonic,
social norms [that are] rooted in slavery, capitalism and patriarch,
ya’ll.I am the former undergraduate, transfer student, representing a part
of the undergraduate population that has one the highest rates of going
onto graduate schools. That’s right- transfer students have one of the
highest rates of going on to graduate school.But I do not stand here alone today. I am one of you and collectively, we are “we.”
Who are “we” they ask? Hmm.
We are the single parents trying to navigate our way through the
education system pipelines of UCLA, the welfare pipelines and people’s
personal perception pipelines of who they think we are.Who are we, they ask?
We were all human until…
Race disconnected us
Religion separated us
Politics divided us
and now- the world classifies us.
Who am “I”, you ask?
I’m the shattered spirit, pushing past her intellectual insecurities,
anxiously sitting for the G.R.E. I am the Bruin mom editing her
graduate school statement for the eighth time, not sure if she’s finally
good enough to join the rest of the nation’s elite graduate students. I
am the phenomenal woman, gathering the strength she needs at 2 o’clock
in the morning to finally click “submit” on her pending graduation
school application.Who am I?
I am the broken-hearted lady who had to work on recovering her
security level. The lady who was hurt every time society reminded her
that she need to lose weight. I am the 320 pound lady who hid behind her
UCLA sweatshirt in the summer time.I am the lady that my male cohorts labeled as ‘cool, funny and smart,’ but never asked out on a date. Yo bad!
image: https://cdn.necolebitchie.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/JULIET-DORIS-RESIZED-gif.gif
I am the rejected beauty who hid behind the fake smile and went on to
be both mother and father. Nah girl, I don’t have a husband. I’m the
one who holds it down. I gotta cook, clean, pay the bills, do homework
with the kids, take out the trash, put them to bed, and then work on my
15 page ‘Policy Analysis’ paper and lose out on sleep.Am I tired?
Girl,of course I’m tired. But I don’t have time to complain
because the demands of motherhood, internship work and school didn’t
give me a chance to negotiate the weight of my eyelids.Who am I?
I’m the unmarried Black prototype. The lady presumed to be
another poor whore, welfare queen, single parent with a bunch of baby
daddies- presumably.See, I’m a strong Black woman and this is what I’m supposed to do.
But I’m the one who has been blessed with a second chance towards an
education, I’m not going to mess up this time. I can’t afford to,
literally.
See, if my peers get a bad grade on their record- it’s just a “ding.”
But if my GPA falls below a 3.0, I’m physically and institutionally
homeless again.And who can I run to? My brother? He can’t help me. He’s too busy
trying to dodge the police to prevent getting choked, shot and murdered
with his hands up while saying ‘I CAN’T BREATHE.’ All because he was trying to find his way through a world that has perceives him to be a menace to society.
Who are we, you ask? Hmph!We are the assumed welfare queens, who are now transforming academia.
Even when society considered us damaged goods and wrote us off as
liabilities, marginalized single parents who are perpetuating a cycle of
poverty.
See, we are human thinking subjects. Diving into power points once
again, proving we are scholars too. See, scholars before we [even] had one
degree. We existed as such before their eyes perceived. So when the
world caught up, what was once perceived as arrogance was justified as
reality.See, we are who were were, before they knew what it was. We have spunk. We have personality. “We’s important too.”
We are the ones we have been waiting for.
Who am I, you ask?
I’m the one I have been waiting for, I am a mentor
to young lost women. I’m a grown ass woman who has finally found love
within her, the woman who been celibate for some type now.I am the hyper-educated woman whose lost over 85 pounds and who is now comfortable in her own skin.
I am perfectly imperfect. I am my tattoos. My Jay’s (Jordans) and my piercings- which narrate just a part of my story.
I am the educated descendent of an African slave whose learned that
she can not just dismantle the master’s house using the master’s tools,
but instead- (pauses) you gonna let that marinate? – but instead learned
how to theorize and develop new tools to which to learn how to demolish
the master’s house, and in his place, plant seeds of transform and
resistance, creating ages of change and not ages of “trends” ya’ll!For the generations to come, I am the graduate student who is glad
she chose UCLA, when BOTH USC and UCLA were knocking on her door.Who am I, you ask? I’m the one I’ve been waiting for. “Ms. Juliet C.
Doris”- for now- one of UCLA’s newest masters of social work graduates.
But keeping in the eye of the PhD horizon, and someday I will be Dr. Juliet C. Doris of Harvard, Columbia, or maybe even that other university across town, right?But with that said- I am you. You are me. And our lives matter. And this is why- BLACK GRADUATES LIVES MATTER!