{"id":42215,"date":"2015-08-13T00:19:16","date_gmt":"2015-08-13T00:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=42215"},"modified":"2017-03-18T13:38:51","modified_gmt":"2017-03-18T13:38:51","slug":"42215","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=42215","title":{"rendered":"What it Means to be Mixed Race During the Fight for Black Lives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.forharriet.com\/2015\/08\/what-it-means-to-be-mixed-race-during.html\" target=\"_blank\">What it Means to be Mixed Race During the Fight for Black Lives<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.forharriet.com\/2015\/08\/what-it-means-to-be-mixed-race-during.html\" target=\"_blank\">For Harriet<\/a><br \/>\n2015-08-12<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/shannon_luders\" target=\"_blank\">Shannon Luders-Manuel<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When I talk about my family culture, I\u2019m mixed. When I talk about racism, I\u2019m black. When <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Trayvon_Martin\" target=\"_blank\">Trayvon Martin<\/a> was shot for wearing a hoodie, I was black. When <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Death_of_Eric_Garner\" target=\"_blank\">Eric Garner was choked to death<\/a> for selling cigarettes on the street, I was black. When <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Death_of_Sandra_Bland\" target=\"_blank\">Sandra Bland<\/a> was arrested for failing to turn on her blinker, I was black. When churchgoers were shot for being black, I was black.<\/p>\n<p>I was raised by the white side of my family, in mostly white areas. I had white friends most of my life, not because of any type of preference, but because that\u2019s who was around. I grew up Eastern European folk dancing in the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Santa_Cruz_Mountains\" target=\"_blank\">Santa Cruz Mountains<\/a> with my family. I had plum pudding at Christmas, and my first celebrity crush was <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Neil_Patrick_Harris\" target=\"_blank\">Neil Patrick Harris<\/a>. During both childhood and adulthood, I\u2019ve had others try to define me the way they wanted to, which varied depending on who was doing the defining. My father said mixed isn\u2019t whole. A black woman told me I wasn\u2019t black. A white best friend said she didn\u2019t see me as black. The grandmother of another white friend asked why she was hanging around with a black girl. As I\u2019ve gotten older, the labeling hasn\u2019t stopped, but my self-identity has gotten stronger. Most of the time I see myself as mixed, but when I see black men and women brutalized or killed for breathing while black, I\u2019m black, and proudly, viscerally so&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forharriet.com\/2015\/08\/what-it-means-to-be-mixed-race-during.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I talk about my family culture, I\u2019m mixed. When I talk about racism, I\u2019m black. When Trayvon Martin was shot for wearing a hoodie, I was black. When Eric Garner was choked to death for selling cigarettes on the street, I was black. When Sandra Bland was arrested for failing to turn on her blinker, I was black. When churchgoers were shot for being black, I was black.<\/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":[18377,3966],"class_list":["post-42215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-for-harriet","tag-shannon-luders-manuel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42215","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=42215"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52584,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42215\/revisions\/52584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}