The quest for racial validity |
The Berkeley Beacon
Boston, Massachusetts
2017-11-02
Elise Chen, Beacon Correspondent
I identify as a person of color, but in the fight for racial justice I often feel more like an ally than a member of the POC community.
I’m biracial—Chinese on my dad’s side, European descent on my mom’s. As I navigate through the world, I usually pass as white, which provides me with privileges most of my POC peers don’t have. I understand I have a responsibility to use this privilege as a tool to amplify the voices of people who continue to be silenced.
In many POC communities, members are encouraged to prioritize the voices of those within the group who are most marginalized. They often discourage centering whiteness in conversations, because it’s exhausting for members to hear about white people again when so much of life already revolves around the systemic inequality created and upheld by white people.
But when you’re a POC whose existence does, in fact, center on whiteness, it can feel isolating…
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