{"id":38244,"date":"2014-11-10T19:50:10","date_gmt":"2014-11-10T19:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=38244"},"modified":"2014-11-10T19:51:55","modified_gmt":"2014-11-10T19:51:55","slug":"growing-up-too-black-in-trinidad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=38244","title":{"rendered":"Growing Up \u201cToo Black\u201d In Trinidad"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenewlocalmag.com\/growing-up-too-black-in-trinidad\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>Growing Up \u201cToo Black\u201d In Trinidad<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenewlocalmag.com\" target=\"_blank\">The New Local: Think Global, Read Local<\/a><br \/>\n2014-11-10<\/p>\n<p><strong>Malaika Crichlow<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Miami, Florida<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I grew up in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Trinidad\" target=\"_blank\">Trinidad<\/a> in the 80s and 90s as a black girl child. To be black in a country that idealizes the curly hair and mixed ethnicity aesthetic is rough to say the least. Although I shared the same parental genes as my sister, who is considered mixed or \u201cred,\u201d what I embodied physically was dark skin and \u201ckinky\u201d hair. It didn\u2019t matter that my heritage included French, Scottish, East Indian and African; I was black to everyone who saw me, which wouldn\u2019t bother me if I wasn\u2019t treated as <em>less than<\/em> because of it.<\/p>\n<p>I was the daughter of a dark-skinned man who, as a man, couldn\u2019t comprehend my female self-esteem struggles. He didn\u2019t know that his unabashed preference of my light-skinned sister could truly <em>fuck me up<\/em>. As my primary example of the male gender and my only other dark skinned counterpart in our immediate family, he didn\u2019t understand that not loving me as much as my <em>red<\/em> sister could damage my mind and sense of self for years.\u00a0 I was also the daughter of a light-skinned mother who, similarly, couldn\u2019t fully understand my dark-skinned complex because like my sister, she had gotten the <em>red woman\u2019s<\/em> preferential treatment her whole life&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenewlocalmag.com\/growing-up-too-black-in-trinidad\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Growing Up \u201cToo Black\u201d In Trinidad The New Local: Think Global, Read Local 2014-11-10 Malaika Crichlow Miami, Florida I grew up in Trinidad in the 80s and 90s as a black girl child. To be black in a country that idealizes the curly hair and mixed ethnicity aesthetic is rough to say the least. Although [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,21,8,25],"tags":[18399,18398,18397,18396,18395,299],"class_list":["post-38244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-latincarib","category-media-archive","category-women","tag-malaika-crichlow","tag-new-local","tag-new-local-magazine","tag-the-new-local","tag-the-new-local-magazine","tag-trinidad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38244","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=38244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}