{"id":44955,"date":"2016-01-04T03:19:40","date_gmt":"2016-01-04T03:19:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=44955"},"modified":"2017-01-08T03:15:32","modified_gmt":"2017-01-08T03:15:32","slug":"best-of-2015-not-quite-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=44955","title":{"rendered":"BEST OF 2015: Not Quite White"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/madison365.com\/index.php\/2015\/12\/29\/best-of-2015-not-quite-white\/\" target=\"_blank\">BEST OF 2015: Not Quite White<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/madison365.com\" target=\"_blank\">Madison365<\/a><br \/>\nMadison, Wisconsin<br \/>\n2015-12-29<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/matthew-braunginn-8b75649\" target=\"_blank\">Matthew Braunginn<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/madison365.com\/index.php\/2015\/12\/29\/best-of-2015-not-quite-white\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/madison365.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/3425fae.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<small><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/braunginn\" target=\"_blank\">Matthew Braunginn<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n<p>I may never be able to truly \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=5864\" target=\"_blank\">pass<\/a>\u201d or to be \u201crace neutral.\u201d I have always been and always will be \u201cnot quite white.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I reject those terms because I have been othered on their terms. I can never fully fit in among a group of white people. And even though my pigment is closer to that of my white peers, I have always found more comfort in being around my black brothers and sisters; a sense of belonging and shared struggle that I have never felt in a room full of white people&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I live in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Madison,_Wisconsin\" target=\"_blank\">Madison, Wisconsin<\/a>, a predominantly white, liberal city that maintains egregious racial disparities. According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/racetoequity.net\/\" target=\"_blank\">Race to Equity report<\/a>, Madison has one of the largest education gaps in the nation: 75 percent of its children living in poverty are black, with black children making up just 8.5 percent of its population; black unemployment is at 25 percent versus 5 percent for whites. Adult black males are 4.8 percent of its population, yet in 2011 they made up 43 percent of new prison placement.<\/p>\n<p>Madison is a very different experience for blacks than it is for whites. I grew up in a bi-racial house. My mother is white and my father is black. I am fair-skinned enough so that I can \u201cpass\u201d at times, but times that are not of my making. My parents raised my sister and I to be racially aware, to understand the racial dynamics of this nation, and to understand the sins of its past. But I am not white. Throughout my childhood this reality created and fostered an extra layer of confusion for me. I fought through a gauntlet of anger, confusion, pain, and deep depression. Now I am experiencing an awakening, a taking back of my power of self-identification&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/madison365.com\/index.php\/2015\/12\/29\/best-of-2015-not-quite-white\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BEST OF 2015: Not Quite White Madison365 Madison, Wisconsin 2015-12-29 Matthew Braunginn Matthew Braunginn I may never be able to truly \u201cpass\u201d or to be \u201crace neutral.\u201d I have always been and always will be \u201cnot quite white.\u201d I reject those terms because I have been othered on their terms. I can never fully fit [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,8,6462,20],"tags":[19560,22539,22540,5661],"class_list":["post-44955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-madison","tag-madison365","tag-matthew-braunginn","tag-wisconsin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44955","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=44955"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51083,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44955\/revisions\/51083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}