{"id":39306,"date":"2015-01-07T17:44:48","date_gmt":"2015-01-07T17:44:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=39306"},"modified":"2015-01-07T17:44:48","modified_gmt":"2015-01-07T17:44:48","slug":"what-being-mixed-race-in-a-small-town-does-to-your-sense-of-beauty-otherwise-known-as-growing-up-exotic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=39306","title":{"rendered":"What Being Mixed Race in a Small Town Does to Your Sense of Beauty: Otherwise Known as Growing Up “Exotic”"},"content":{"rendered":"

What Being Mixed Race in a Small Town Does to Your Sense of Beauty: Otherwise Known as Growing Up “Exotic”<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Bustle<\/a>
\n2015-01-06<\/p>\n

Justin Robert Thomas Smith<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Let me just start by saying this: Up until this point (and hopefully for at least a little while longer), I\u2019ve led a relatively charmed life. I grew up with lots of love and emotional support from my single mother and the rest of our family; with a roof over the top bunk of the bed I rested my head on well into my teenage years; with a warm meal delivered to me almost every night from the diner my family continues to own to this day; and blessed with every new video game system as soon as it hit the market \u2014 a big deal for a family of softcore gamers. But relativity will always be a slippery slope, and a charmed life doesn\u2019t come without a curse or two to keep the magic alive and the blessings counted. My curse? Growing up in a place where I was considered \u201cexotic\u201d by almost everyone. In other words: Being mixed isn\u2019t all vanilla-chocolate-swirls or Uh-Oh Oreos.<\/p>\n

Where I grew up, most lives were led in a similarly charmed manner. Where I grew up, most lives were also white. In Lacey Township, NJ<\/a> \u2014 a small conglomerate of towns that added their populations up to hit a whopping 25,000 residents \u2014 I could count on my hands how many black families paid their taxes (an extremely low percentage of diversity that was roughly equal to that of any other minority\u2019s presence in the area). Keeping that in mind, I was also raised solely by a white mother: My black father had been [rarely in, but for the most part] out of the picture for a long time, which gave our family\u2019s frame an unusual shape to go with its already unusual coloring. People were surprised to see my mother alone with three dark-skinned children, but \u2014 and I believe this is especially because she was white \u2014 they felt comfortable enough to make comments to her (and eventually, as we got older, even to us) about our more \u201cexotic-looking\u201d features. That\u2019s how I was first introduced to a crazy little thing called microaggression, or \u2014 you know \u2014 unintentional discrimination…<\/p>\n

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

What Being Mixed Race in a Small Town Does to Your Sense of Beauty: Otherwise Known as Growing Up “Exotic” Bustle 2015-01-06 Justin Robert Thomas Smith Let me just start by saying this: Up until this point (and hopefully for at least a little while longer), I\u2019ve led a relatively charmed life. I grew up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,8,20],"tags":[19003,19001,19002],"class_list":["post-39306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-bustle","tag-justin-r-t-smith","tag-justin-robert-thomas-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39306","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=39306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}