Piya on race, identity and ticking boxes

Posted in Asian Diaspora, Audio, Canada, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive on 2017-04-01 01:27Z by Steven

Piya on race, identity and ticking boxes

Out in the Open with Piya Chattopadhyay
CBC Radio
2017-03-27

Piya Chattopadhyay, Host


Piya and her daughter

A month after Rachel Dolezal was propelled into the public spotlight in 2015, the American writer Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book Between the World and Me came out.

It’s essentially a letter to his son about the bleak realities of being black in America today.

And like one of those memories that seem so present, so real you can almost touch them, I clearly recall my white husband coming home, after he finished reading Ta-Nehisi’s book.

He was standing on our back porch, and he asked me how I — a woman of Indian heritage, a woman who is undeniably brown — felt about our biological kids, who are biracial, but look outwardly white…

Read the story here. Listen to the story (00:03:42) here.

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