{"id":41191,"date":"2015-05-23T00:23:19","date_gmt":"2015-05-23T00:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41191"},"modified":"2015-05-23T00:32:06","modified_gmt":"2015-05-23T00:32:06","slug":"im-black-im-white-im-both-im-neither","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41191","title":{"rendered":"I’m Black. I’m White. I’m Both. I’m Neither."},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m Black. I’m White. I’m Both. I’m Neither.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

GPB Blogs: On Second Thought<\/a>
\nGeorgia Public Broadcasting<\/a>
\nAtlanta, Georgia
\n2015-05-20<\/p>\n

Celeste Headlee<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m black.<\/strong>
\nMy grandfather is William Grant Still<\/a>, the “Dean of African-American composers.” His skin was the color of maple syrup<\/a>. Mine is the color of caf\u00e9 au lait<\/a>. My grandfather suffered countless indignities and injustices because of his color. I remember them still, almost viscerally. They still feel personal to me.<\/p>\n

When he was going to Oberlin College to accept an honorary degree, he drove from Los Angeles<\/a> with his family. He couldn’t stay at the white hotels because he was black; he couldn’t stay at the black hotels because his wife was white. So he drove 2,300 miles without stopping. In photos of the event, he’s stooping; he looks exhausted. I’ve heard that story dozens of times, and yet, my cheeks feel hot thinking about it even now. It still makes me angry.<\/p>\n

My grandparents had to get married in Tijuana<\/a> because their marriage was illegal in the US. That’s personal. He had to build a six-foot fence around his home to protect my mother and her brother from violence. It was the 1940s and people were dragging mixed-race families out of their beds, beating them, sometimes setting their homes on fire. I look at my mother sometimes and think about how lucky I am.<\/p>\n

I have the same amount of black ancestry as Sally Hemings<\/a>, slave to Thomas Jefferson<\/a> and mother to six of his children. (Side note: three of those children lived their adult lives as white. They passed<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

I was the second-darkest kid in my school in Mission Viejo, California<\/a>. Everyone expected me to be best friends with Shawna, the only African-American girl. Kids called me a “nigger” sometimes. I punched one of them in the eye and was sent to the principal’s office. The principal told me that if someone called me that name, I should punch them again.<\/p>\n

I’m white…<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

I’m Black. I’m White. I’m Both. I’m Neither. GPB Blogs: On Second Thought Georgia Public Broadcasting Atlanta, Georgia 2015-05-20 Celeste Headlee I’m black. My grandfather is William Grant Still, the “Dean of African-American composers.” His skin was the color of maple syrup. Mine is the color of caf\u00e9 au lait. My grandfather suffered countless indignities […]<\/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":[14874,20107,20109,20108],"class_list":["post-41191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-celeste-headlee","tag-georgia-public-broadcasting","tag-gpb","tag-gpb-blogs-on-second-thought"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41191","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=41191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}