Dyesha Belhumeur—Defying Stereotypes & Living Undefined
Listen above, on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Transcript: ALEXA ASHLEY: This is Alexa Ashley with Eyes Wide. In this conversation, I get to sit down with Dyesha Belhumeur to talk about her experience growing up as a gay black woman in America, and how she's found confidence in her identity, despite societal barriers and is working to give others the same. Dyesha is a graduate from the University Of Washington's foster school of business, and is the founder of Undefined, a clothing line designed to encourage the black community, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community and women to live outside of the box society has placed them in and empower those who wear it to express the most important aspects of their identity, culture, and beliefs. ALEXA ASHLEY: What was it like growing up as Dyesha Belhumeur? DYESHA BELHUMEUR: Well, I was born in Harlan, Oregon to a single parent. And shortly after that, we moved to Federal Way, Washington, where I lived for 13 years. I went to Federal Way High School which is one of the most diverse public school systems in the nation. So I was always a part of this melting pot culture and then I went on to college at the University Of Washington and went for a business degree with the foster school of business. The feel of growing up for me, it was always very family-oriented. I grew up with actually a lot of my cousins, very close cousins that were more like my brothers growing up and then childhood friends that I grew up with became close to me, close enough for me to call them my cousins. As much as I liked to play and enjoy the same things that other children did, I also had to grow up a lot faster. Being the child of a single parent and being an African-American woman, all of those just meant that I had to grow up a lot faster than a lot of my other counterparts. Things like learning how to take care of yourself as soon as you get off from school, being able to walk yourself home from the bus stop knowing that you have to do your homework and be able to cook yourself a snack and do all those things before you're able to go outside, which could mean that you're doing all those things before your mom even gets home. Learning how to prep dinner at a young age that it's easier for your mom to be able to make dinner when she comes home. Just learning how to take a lot more of an active role in the household at a very young age. Growing up as Dyesha was, I think it was fun, but it was also knowing that you had to have a lot more of an adult-like life. So when I was younger, being raised by my mom, she really didn't raise me trying to teach me the differences of black and white. I wasn't raised automatically from kindergarten up just knowing that I was different because of the color of my skin. And so the realizing point that I noticed, like, okay, I'm different was that point when I actually looked up the definitions of white and black and in the dictionary. And part of that was because it was black history month at my school and like every other elementary school you learn about the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa parks. Being an African American child, I think a lot of teachers don't really realize that maybe as a child, you don't really realize that you're African-American. And so there came a point where it was kind of like them asking, like, “what was your take? How do you think it would feel to be this color during that time?” And I felt like they kind of had a habit of asking people of color that question rather than just anybody and everybody, because at that age you really don't know. I kind of looked at it like, why are you asking me this question? You know, why am I supposed to know the answer to that question? And so I went home, and I had this conversation with my mom about what is black, what is white? What do these things actually mean? And what does it mean for me to be black? And that's when I actually looked that up in the dictionary and I actually still own that dictionary to this day, the Webster's dictionary. I can remember what my room looked like when I looked it up. I can remember exactly where I was sitting when I looked at that in the dictionary. And at that age as a child, I think that really, I just knew what I processed at that time...it was one, I was different and two, that my difference was looked down upon. It wasn't something that was good and so from that point, that's how I started to move through life was just understanding that I'm looked down upon generally, because I have this color skin because I am labeled as a black person—as being black. And so knowing that, it just changed the way that I navigated through the world. I think it almost kind of like removed my innocence as a child because it's like, as a child, you have an innocent happiness about you and I think that it kind of just removed that innocence and it was like, at that point I had to be automatically conscious of everything I did. Because I had to understand what story that told to other people out in the public eye. I think really from that point it's almost like in my mind, there was just a dichotomy, you know, like there were only two worlds. There was the white world, there was the black world. And if you didn't fall into the white world, you automatically fell into the black world. If you didn't fall into the black world, you automatically fell into the white world. So there was no way to kind of straddle in between. So was that just kind of the lens that I looked at everything through. So for me, everything was either a black or white issue at that point. So I looked at economics, like how much money do you have? At least what does it look like you have based on your appearance, you know? And so I started to kind of figure out, okay, generally, you know, those who are labeled as white and dress, maybe a little bit better, have less hand-me-downs, have cleaner clothes, but then those who are black, maybe not so much, you know? And so I think I just started to move through life, really labeling things as, if it was white, it meant this. And if it was black, it meant this. And then as I got older, I started to see those things in education. You see white school districts versus African-American or people of color or minority school districts, and you see how things are treated differently. You see the differences and the amount of money that's granted to each of those schools. You see differences in the conditions of their gyms, in the conditions of their schools, in the people that actually go to those schools. So I think from that point, it automatically changed the way that I was even able to view the world. So I automatically started looking at everything through the lens: what is black and what is white? ALEXA ASHLEY: It seems like you move fast when you want to do something like start Undefined. Where does your drive come? DYESHA BELHUMEUR: I think for me, really it was my mom. I saw the way that my mom struggled being a single parent, getting no help from what should have been my father. And you know that caused her to have to drop out of college cause she got pregnant with me while being in college. And I saw just the way that all of that really just affected her, going forward, affected her ability to raise me. It affected her ability to be as present as she would have liked to be in my life. Because you have to sacrifice making money or being a whole part of your child's life when you're a single parent, putting food on the table or being present at a basketball game. So you've got those two weights. And so I think that really what it came down to was it's like, I'm not doing this really for myself, I'm doing it for my mom. I'm doing it so that when she hits 60 years old, she's not worried...when I was told growing up that I should be retired by 65 years old. And realistically, that's just not a retiring age now. And so really my drive came from feeling like I needed to be that counterpart for my mom because she didn't have that. So I think for other people who are looking for a drive it's really just finding your why, like, why is it that you get up and do what you do every morning? Because I think if it's just to make money, that's not going to be a big enough reason why, and you're never going to really have the drive to really do what you want to do. Your reason has to go a lot beyond that. For my reason, it's to make sure that my mom is taken care of and she doesn't have to want. It's to make sure that my grandma's able to go comfortably because at the age that she's at, it's only a matter of time before she reaches that point. And there's so many things that she still hasn't seen as an 80-year-old African American woman who went through the Civil Rights Movement who actually fought in a court of law for her equal rights to be able to live in an apartment complex when a white man refused to rent to her and my grandfather, who was white...I have a purpose that's a lot bigger than me. I feel like I'm striving also, not just to put myself into a position of success, but also to help bring other people who are African-American, who are people of color, who are LGBTQ, who are from marginalized minority communities and help bring them over the fence so that they can do the same thing. Because if we don't have enough of us who are willing to help each other get a leg up then we're going to continue to just struggle as whole groups. Throughout the rest of our lives. So I think it's really just about finding a why and finding a reason or a purpose tha
