Rachel Dolezal, Luvvie and the boundaries of BlacknessPosted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Autobiography, Media Archive, United States on 2017-05-18 16:49Z by Steven |
Rachel Dolezal, Luvvie and the boundaries of Blackness
San Diego City Beat
2017-05-01
Just because I’m biracial, that doesn’t mean I didn’t put in the work
I sat nearly knee-to-knee with my professor in his cramped office. Pulled up on his computer was my latest essay. I was trying, rather unsuccessfully, to write about my experience growing up Black and Filipino in Kentucky. I wrote about my mother, born and raised in Manila by her mother. About her Black father who lived in California. About my mother’s skin, pale as cashews and lighter than my own. I wrote about what it was like for her to marry a Black man and move to the U.S. only to be confronted, through her children, with the same racism that had plagued her much darker siblings their entire lives.
My professor wanted to know, “Why now?” Why was I writing about all of this now? Was it because identity politics were in vogue?…
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