My name is not Julie: when I least expected it, racism ruined the party.(transformations)

The day after the Pope passed, I attended a gathering in New York City to promote Jewish-Dominican relations, instead of going to mass like I had promised my mother. The event marked the launching of an exhibit on Sosua, a town in the Dominican Republic where the government gave land to Jewish refugees fleeing Europe in 1938.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

I stepped off the bus in my special-event DKNY heels and spotted a group heading toward the high-end apartment building with Central Park views. The doorman, white and mild-mannered, referred the all-white group ahead of me to the right-side entrance of the first-floor apartment. He referred me to the left-side entrance, toward what looked like a closet.

"Are you sure this is the right way?" I asked the doorman before entering a small hallway full of brooms and paint. After taking a few steps, I was in a kitchen packed with catering staff.

At that moment, I realized that the doorman had sent me to the kitchen because he thought that I, the brown girl, was there to serve. Shock, then fury passed through me. A woman from the kitchen staff looked at me and asked quietly if I was there to work that day. "No. I don't think so," I said, trying to keep my composure. Then I added, "I think I have just been racially profiled." I walked out of the kitchen and into the hallway calculating. Should I leave? Should I slap the doorman? Maybe I'll scream. Is it best to just smile at the other guests and behave lawyerly? Please don't let me cry!

By then, the white group that had arrived with me stood in the living room, chatting. Perhaps not noticing my "angry Latina" look, they asked me to join them. I stepped over, half confused, half enraged, and said, "I can't even talk to anyone. I have just been racially profiled." They stared silently back at me.

I put my glass down, having decided to give the doorman a piece of my mind. As I walked out of the apartment, the waitress was already telling him how he "just did that because she was Black." The doorman then saw me and said, "No. You didn't say you were a guest. And besides, I have a lot of Black friends."