{"id":36121,"date":"2014-03-26T19:35:32","date_gmt":"2014-03-26T19:35:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=36121"},"modified":"2014-03-26T19:35:50","modified_gmt":"2014-03-26T19:35:50","slug":"owning-my-mixed-race-identity-why-i-dont-have-to-choose-sides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=36121","title":{"rendered":"Owning my mixed-race identity: Why I don\u2019t have to choose sides"},"content":{"rendered":"

Owning my mixed-race identity: Why I don\u2019t have to choose sides<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Salon<\/a>
\nWednesday, 2014-03-12<\/p>\n

Eternity E. Martis<\/strong><\/a>
\nLondon, Ontario, Canada<\/em><\/p>\n

People can’t seem to understand that I’m not either black or Anglo-Pakistani, but all of the above<\/em><\/p>\n

My mother is Anglo-Pakistani and my father is Jamaican (and a quarter Chinese). I grew up with my mother and her family, a chubby, curly-haired, dark-skinned child eating chana masala<\/a>, aloo<\/a> paneer<\/a> and chicken makhani<\/a>.\u00a0 As a child, I didn\u2019t know I was any different from the rest of my family. But as I grew up, I realized that I was different, because I\u00a0looked<\/em>\u00a0different.<\/p>\n

My mom is fair-skinned with pin-straight hair. My uncle and several other members of my family are also fair with clear, light green eyes. I did not get any of those traits \u2014 I\u2019m the darkest-skinned person in my immediate family, and the only one who\u2019s mixed-race. As a child, I envied my mother\u2019s skin; I longed to be white. She didn\u2019t have to feel uncomfortable in the spaces white people inhabited. She wasn\u2019t sneered at, followed around department stores by an employee as if she was a thief, or pushed off the sidewalk when she was walking to school by white kids. Life seemed easy for her.<\/p>\n

I despised my father; his absence humiliated me. Not only did I loathe his withdrawn parenting, but I hated his genes. I inherited his dark skin and large nose. All six of his kids did. They were markers of my presumed inferiority, giving people a reason to treat me unkindly, giving boys a reason to rate me a \u201c4\u201d for my \u201cmonkey face\u201d while my other female classmates received a generous \u201c9.\u201d It also didn\u2019t matter that I was my mother\u2019s child; nowhere did people recognize me in her…<\/p>\n

…Someone asked me why people who are mixed with black try to distance themselves from their black ancestry, as if we are ashamed. It has nothing to do with shame; on my part, I find myself more in touch with s side now that I am older. However, I do want to bring awareness to mixed race politics and break down rigid categories of race. I do not have to be black because I am mixed; I do not have to be white because I am mixed. I do not have to be Pakistani because I am mixed. I do not have to choose a side, because I am everything…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Owning my mixed-race identity: Why I don\u2019t have to choose sides Salon Wednesday, 2014-03-12 Eternity E. Martis London, Ontario, Canada People can’t seem to understand that I’m not either black or Anglo-Pakistani, but all of the above My mother is Anglo-Pakistani and my father is Jamaican (and a quarter Chinese). I grew up with my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,19,8],"tags":[17134,10962],"class_list":["post-36121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-canada","category-media-archive","tag-eternity-e-martis","tag-salon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}