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

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.

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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."

I re-entered the apartment, convinced that I had to talk to the hostess.

When she appeared, I was still the only person of color in the room. I waited anxiously for her to reach me so that I could whisper what had happened. I waited to confide the story, anticipated her furrowed brow and apology or promise to chastise the doorman.

The hostess approached and asked my name. "Julissa," I said.

"Hi, Julie," she replied.

Thinking she had not heard me, I smiled, "No, my name is Julissa."

She said, "No, it's Julie." Then, with a smile, as she walked away, "It's going to have to be Julie for tonight because there is no way that I will be able to pronounce that name!"

Then the door opened, and I thought I was saved.

Finally, the Dominicans had arrived, ready to challenge anyone who didn't understand the importance of what had happened. I ran to my people, and breathlessly told them about the incident. As I stood waiting for a collective cry of protest, one of my friends leaned into me and said, "Julissa, whatever you do, don't make a scene."

The program began. The host and a public official praised the wonderful Dominican government for allowing Jewish families to settle in their country. I waited for them to mention that the dictator Rafael Trujillo had great incentive. A year earlier he had orchestrated his own genocidal massacre by killing over 20,000 Haitians. I pointed out the paradox and both Dominicans and Jews responded: "Can't you see that by bringing up the bad, you take away from the good?"

How deep the toll of those colonial days. Where I thought I could have an honest conversation about racism and anti-Semitism, I was silenced. I was to treat these happenings as private business between me and the doorman, or between Trujillo and his Pope.

That day, the authors of my international law textbooks, the famously tolerant Polish Pope, my mother and the butcher Trujillo all seemed to gather around, ready for a toast, waiting to see what I would do next. I, Julissa Violeta Bienvenida Reynoso Pantaleon. Lawyer, activist, Harvard-educated, Dominican, New Yorker, just another victim of racial profiling and casual intolerance. Julie.