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12/28/2022 - biracial person issues
Mood: Anxious.
Okay so... I've been noticing some strange trend in black online spaces these days. Lately, people have started to make up the idea that mixed people (black + anything else) means you're not actually black, you're biracial. As in, it's a separate racial category that has nothing to do with blackness. I don't know if they've ever specified if they're referring to black/white mixes or what, but I'm sure that's the only thing they're thinking of when they talk about this shit. Keep in mind, I'm referring to African-Americans when I talk about this - I understand the culture around race is different in other places. I'm not from those places though so I'm not gonna talk about it.
Obviously it's a troubling thing, but at least for now, I'm not sure it's meaningfully spread outside of ONLINE spaces. I've got no clue why THIS is the message bitches are trying to spread lately. Any time I've been in black community spaces, whether it be church or school or what, nobody ever was tryna act like the white-skinned kid born to black parents wasn't still black. On top of that, nobody acts like Drake, Rihanna, or Cardi B aren't black.
So, here's the embarrassing part for me. Even though this kind of thing doesn't really get to me, it started messing with how I see myself a bit. People joke around a lot about my skin tone and being lightskin, which has only gotten lighter since the pandemic started. That doesn't really bother me (although I'd LIKE to get my melanin back) but that on top of the weird online bullshit discourse was getting to me. For one thing, it's more proof I need to just delete my Twitter and Insta accounts and get everyone's Discord/email instead. On the other though, I decided to sit down and think about it for a bit and work through my feelings.
When I was really young I was pretty pale, but then my skin got darker, and now it's lighter again because I never get any sun. I was raised by the black side of my family, who're from the south. My white side was always kept out of the picture and alot of our talk about heritage was about what parts of Africa we descend from. I went to a black church that my parents took me to and everyone accepted me just fine there. I remember I met a girl who was really into anime and we used to draw together - she was a bit older than me.
Outside of church, I was always very distinctly identified as black and as "the other", primarily because I didn't know alot of other black kids at my schools. Sometimes I was expected to have certain interests, like hip-hop (I liked rock exclusively at the time, thanks mom) and people were disappointed when I didn't. For a while I was actually ashamed of my skin tone and always drew myself as a white person, until I eventually started to overshoot my skin tone and color my skin a lot darker than it actually was. It probably had something to do with the fact that I wasn't white-skinned but I also wasn't dark like other black people I knew, so I thought my skin color was weird.
Anyways, as I got older, I stopped going to church and was mainly around non-black people, who occasionally would make comments about me being black. Kinda in that way that teenagers love to make offensive jokes. Some of it didn't bother me, because I mainly hung out with a lot of other racial outcasts (i.e. black people, Jews, immigrant kids). Although there were some people who just pushes me in a way that pissed me off, like the time some dumbass I didn't know asked me if I was "a nigger", and I had to keep myself from beating the shit out of him in class.
As time has passed. I still don't talk to many black people these days just because I have stuck with my buddies from high school, but I've accepted my identity as a black person even more. I've been socialized as black, identified as black (myself and by others), and the only time it's even been remotely questioned was because people decided to start sowing division online. I, myself, know that there's a lot more to black identity than the shade of your skin - not that that's a HUGE part of it, but it seems like certain people can't see past that.
It's this whole topic that's kinda eased me up on the whole "mixed people shut up" thing I have going on. We tend to over-prioritize our issues over all else and act like our little identity conflicts are worse than racism darker-skinned and "fully" black people's. Obviously this is some sort of extension of the recent trend of darker female characters in media being played by biracial girls. The problem ain't gonna be solved by excluding Zendaya from the black community, especially since you KNOW you wouldn't be saying this to your one lightskin cousin.
UGH. Sorry if this is just pure rambling. I'm really tired right now but someone brought the topic up to me and I decided I should get my thoughts out on it.