So here I am. I’m still black and I’m proud, but I will acknowledge the white blood that is running through my veins if pressed more about my heritage.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2016-04-10 02:47Z by Steven

So here I am. I’m still black and I’m proud, but I will acknowledge the white blood that is running through my veins if pressed more about my heritage. I also love to see the shock on peoples’ faces when I tell them that my ancestors were raped by slave masters and my “mulatto” and “quadroon” ancestors kept mixing with other mulattoes, quadroons, and octoroons. It depends on the audience how deep I want to go.

Amal Gonzalez, “How To Identify With Your People When Your People Won’t Let You,” Swirl Nation Blog, March 30, 2016. http://www.swirlnationblog.com/blog/2016/3/30/how-to-identify-with-your-people-when-your-people-wont-let-you.

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How To Identify With Your People When Your People Won’t Let You

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Media Archive, United States on 2016-04-10 02:16Z by Steven

How To Identify With Your People When Your People Won’t Let You

Swirl Nation Blog
2016-03-30

Amal Gonzalez

This is very hard for me to write because I don’t know how to begin.

I’ve written about being racially ambiguous. Growing up in a predominantly white environment without real examples of people who are mixed-raced in the media made me “other”, but definitely not white, or at least not 100% white. I’ve written about my parents both being mixed-race, but because of the one-drop-rule, they were black and never were allowed, or even compelled to identify as anything other than black. My dad definitely “looks” like he has African blood flowing through his veins – full lips, coarse, kinky hair, and a slightly broader nose. My mother, on the other hand, has been identified as Latina, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, and Jewish. She has naturally soft hair, an angular nose, fairer skin, not pale. However, my mother grew up with 6 black sisters in a white rural town in California. Everyone knew her family and she was reminded she was black every day.

So you can only imagine, when it came to raising me and my sisters, we were told about our white relatives. We were told about our family members we will probably never meet because they decided to “pass” during a time when being white was truly a privilege. BUT we never identified with being white or bi-racial. It was always people around me that pointed out my differences, the “other”. It was society that pointed out that I didn’t necessarily fit in one category based on my physical appearance…

Read the entire article here.

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