Your identity is your superpower | America Ferrera

218,473 views ・ 2021-07-10

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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When I was 15, I got my first professional audition.
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It was a commercial for cable subscriptions or bail bonds—I don't really remember—but
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what I do remember is that the casting director asked me, "Could you do that again?
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But just this time, sound more Latina."
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It took me most of the car ride home to realize that by "sound more Latina," she was asking
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me to speak in broken English, and I couldn't figure out why the fact that I was an actual
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real-life, authentic Latina didn't really seem to matter.
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Anyway, I didn't get the job.
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I didn't get a lot of the jobs people were willing to see me for: the gangbanger's girlfriend,
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the sassy shoplifter, pregnant chola number two.
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These were the kinds of roles that existed for someone like me, someone they looked at
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and saw as too brown, too fat, too poor, too unsophisticated.
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I kept receiving the same message again and again and again: that my identity was an obstacle
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I had to overcome, and so I thought, "Come at me, obstacle.
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I'm an American.
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My name is America.
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I trained my whole life for this.
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I'll just follow the playbook.
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I'll work harder."
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I stayed out of the sun so that my skin wouldn't get too brown.
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I straightened my curls into submission.
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I constantly tried to lose weight.
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I bought fancier and more expensive clothes, all so that when people looked at me, they
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wouldn't see a too-fat, too-brown, too-poor Latina.
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They would see what I was capable of, and maybe they would give me a chance.
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Just a few years ago, my agent called to explain to me why I wasn't getting a role in a movie.
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He said, "They loved you and they really, really do want to cast diversely, but the
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movie isn't financeable until they cast the white role first."
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I went through this process for years of accepting the failure as my own, and then feeling deep
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shame that I couldn't overcome the obstacles.
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But this time I heard a new voice, [...] a voice that understood my tears and my pain
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were not about losing a job.
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They were about what was actually being said about me—what had been said about me my
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whole life by executives and producers and directors and writers and agents and managers
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and teachers and friends and family—that I was a person of less value.
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I couldn't change what a system believed about me while I believed what the system believed
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about me—and I did.
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I, like everyone around me, believed that it wasn't possible for me to exist in my dream
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as I was,
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What this revealed to me was that it is possible to be the person who genuinely wants to see
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change, while also being the person whose actions keep things the way they are.
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Change will come when each of us has the courage to question our own fundamental values and
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beliefs and then see to it that our actions lead to our best intentions.
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I am just one of millions of people who have been told that in order to fulfill my dreams,
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in order to contribute my talents to the world, I have to resist the truth of who I am.
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My identity is not my obstacle.
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My identity is my superpower.
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I, for one, am ready to stop resisting and to start existing as my full and authentic
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self.
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SHORT:
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I am just one of millions of people who have been told that in order to fulfill my dreams,
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in order to contribute my talents to the world, I have to resist the truth of who I am.
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I didn't get a lot of the jobs people were willing to see me for: the gangbanger's girlfriend,
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the sassy shoplifter, pregnant Chola number two.
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These were the kinds of roles that existed for someone like me, someone they looked at
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and saw as too brown, too fat, too poor, too unsophisticated.
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My identity is not my obstacle.
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My identity is my superpower.
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