A Point of View: Mixed Race Experience is Hard to Categorize. Stop Trying.Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Media Archive, United States on 2021-12-21 03:14Z by Steven |
A Point of View: Mixed Race Experience is Hard to Categorize. Stop Trying.
The Inclusion Solution
2021-05-27
Rochelle Younan-Montgomery, Founder & Facilitator at Holistic Workplace Inclusion LLC
I am mixed Egyptian and white, and I love being biracial. I can navigate differing cultural contexts with relative ease, I enjoy connecting with a wide variety of folx in a multitude of settings, and I take pleasure in deepening my non-Western cultural background. My racial identity has also been the source of an immense amount of pain. My white mother struggled with how to care for my unruly curly hair and would aggressively brush through it when it was dry (a major no-no for tight, thick curls), to the point of bringing me to tears. She now jokes that when I was 5 years old, she had my hair cut short for her birthday, to make things easier on herself. As a mother, I understand how hard parenting can be. However, the choice to “eliminate the hair problem” felt as though my natural hair was a burden for her, rather than something to be curious about, to celebrate, to work with, rather than work against. I am not alone in this; so many mixed children experience the pain of othering by their own families…
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