Mixed Up: ‘I have been accepted by black people and distanced by white people’

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

Identity angst is a luxury of the privileged. And I was privileged. And I was/am angst. The fact that I have time space and a vocabulary to tease out my own relationship to race and represent Asian, and to lobby for more gender equity or fight for diversity in Western media and culture, means that I am already living my mother’s American dream. It wouldn’t look like that to her. Nope. She used to sigh and roll her eyes when I did shows like “Birth of a nASIAN” at the Smithsonian about Asian American identities. She was furious when I got into Juilliard because it meant I was not going to morph into a blonde doctor by sheer force of her will. And she would still be mad today that I am not pursuing her dream of passing as one of the Real Housewives of Assimilation Hills.

Kate Rigg, “My Asian Mom bought me a Blonde Wig.” Medium, October 25, 2019. https://medium.com/@katerigg/my-asian-mom-bought-me-a-blonde-wig-6158df9c7a3a.

Mixed Up: ‘I have been accepted by black people and distanced by white people’

Mixed Up: ‘I have been accepted by black people and distanced by white people’

METRO.co.uk
2019-03-13

Natalie Morris, Senior lifestyle Writer

(Picture by Jerry Syder for Metro.co.uk)

…Elliott Reid is an osteopath with English and Jamaican heritage. He doesn’t believe in the concept of race – he sees it as nothing more than a social construct.

‘Specifically, I descend from the Maroons, the freedom fighters of Jamaica who resided in the eastern mountains of the island,’ explains Elliott.

‘My family names are chiselled into the Emancipation War Monument in Sam Sharpe Square in Montego bay; a monument to all those who fought in the greatest fight for freedom in the British Caribbean, as 60,000 Africans fought the English on Christmas Day, 1831…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Elliott Reid, METRO.co.uk, MetroUK, Natalie Morris

This entry was posted on Friday, March 29th, 2019 at 02:09Z and is filed under Articles, Autobiography, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United Kingdom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Mixed Race Studies

Mixed Up: ‘I have been accepted by black people and distanced by white people’

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